


Nature Boy

by Kim J (notluvulongtime)



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Angst, Babyfic, F/M, Kidfic, Post Resolutions, Postpartum Depression, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-13
Updated: 2013-03-13
Packaged: 2017-12-05 03:44:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/718509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notluvulongtime/pseuds/Kim%20J
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Chakotay’s accidental wife and mother of his child, Kathryn fights her need for perfection and learns what it means to be a woman in full.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Smile

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to elem and corimariee for being the best betas a woman could have.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: Lyrics to “Smile,” “Everything Happens To Me,” “You’re Driving Me Crazy” and “Nature Boy” are by John Turner/Geoffrey Parsons, Tom Adair, Walter Donaldson and Eden Ahbez, respectively. Paramount owns all things Trek, but this story is my baby.

*

 

 _Smile though your heart is aching_  
Smile even though it’s breaking  
When there are clouds in the sky

 _You’ll get by_  
If you smile through your fear and sorrow  
Smile and maybe tomorrow  
You’ll see the sun come shining through 

_For you_

 

*    *    *

 

At the sound of Demothi’s cry, Chakotay woke with a start and reached over to Kathryn’s side of the bed to find her pillow stone cold, the rumpled sheet chilly with her absence.

 

The boy’s lungs were in full song.  Chakotay checked the chronometer twice.  It was 0250 hours.

 

“Kathryn?  Is it my turn?  Kathryn –“

 

Chakotay got up and stumbled in the dark, making his way through the bedroom door and out into the living area.  In racing past the couch, he banged his toe on the coffee table and upset the grey cylindrical breast pump, sending its many attachments to the floor.

 

“Shit.”

 

He bit his lower lip, hissing the pain back into his throat and proceeded to limp as quickly as he could towards the adjacent room.  The baby’s room. 

 

Demothi’s room.

 

“Daddy’s coming!”

 

Chakotay entered the nursery and immediately scooped Demothi into his arms.  Despite the tight swaddling job he’d done only an hour or so before, the lad had managed to worm his way out, clad only in a diaper.

 

The boy was cold and Chakotay placed him on the changing table, opened the drawer beneath and pulled out a blanket sleeper.  He laid his son inside of it, scooting his tiny arms into the holes and zipping it up.  He then enfolded Demothi in his arms and jiggled him gently, making soft whooshing noises. 

 

Weeks ago, the Doctor had advised them to mimic the sounds of Kathryn’s womb to help soothe Demothi’s colic.  It was his opinion that the child wasn’t used to the outside world just yet and any attempts – tight swaddling, white noise, gentle talking – would make his transition easier.

 

Sure enough, Demothi’s wail quieted down to dry hiccupping sobs.  Chakotay made his way to the refrigeration unit in the corner and opened the door.  In the darkness, the light within blinked on and what he was faced with knocked him from half-asleep mode to full wakefulness.

 

Instead of one or two bottles of pumped breast milk, Chakotay was staring at a dozen.

 

He knew it was impossible for Kathryn to have produced such a large supply in so little time.  It had to be replicated formula.  Yet she made it clear only the previous week that Demothi would never be formula-fed.  But the dozen bottles in the unit didn’t disturb Chakotay as much as what lay beside them.

 

It was Kathryn’s combadge.

 

As his son’s sobs built back up to mewling cries, Chakotay had no time to ruminate further.  He grabbed one of the bottles and placed it into the steamer by the changing table.  In five seconds, a beep signaled that the milk was at the proper temperature.

 

As he brought the nipple up to Demothi’s parted lips, Chakotay nudged the combadge he’d been wearing to bed since the lad had been born.

 

“Chakotay to Torres.”

 

There was a long pause before he heard B’Elanna’s communicator come on.  A rustling of covers filled the room, followed by a yawn.

 

*Torres here*

 

“B’Elanna, I need you to help me with Demothi.  I have to go look for the Captain.”

 

*I’ll be right there*

 

*    *    *

 

Luckily for Chakotay, Kathryn hadn’t asked the computer to mask her biosigns.  Still clad in nightclothes, he raced down to shuttle bay two.

 

Was she thinking about a midnight flight to clear her head?  How long was she expecting to be gone?  Chakotay was awake enough to put two and two together; a dozen bottles of synthetic formula was a radical move.  And the discarded combadge?  Not only did she plan to be gone a long time – no, he didn’t want to think about it.  Nevertheless, every nerve ending in his body and every neuron in his brain screamed that something was very, very wrong.

 

The doors slid open and what he saw then stopped him cold.

 

The hangar was open, revealing a mass of stars scattered amidst the black expanse of space.  Kathryn was standing at the end of the bay, her bare feet along the edge.  The view promised vertigo and the only thing that separated her from being sucked into the vacuum was a transparent force field.

 

She turned around.  Her long hair was in disarray and she wore a stained cotton bathrobe.  Dark circles and bags had formed beneath her cerulean eyes and the whites were red from lack of sleep.  She didn’t smile upon seeing him.  She looked almost…disappointed that he was there.

 

“Kathryn!  What are you doing?”

 

Chakotay took several steps forward, but stopped when she put a palm up to caress the force field.  He wanted to utter a command that would give him control over the precautions in the hanger, but he wasn’t sure he’d be quick enough while she was so close to the edge.

 

“I’m sorry for not being the best…wife and mother…lately,” she barely spoke above a murmur.

 

His eyes grew wide.

 

“Kathryn, you’re a wonderful mom.  And I love you.  You just need a break.  Come back to bed.  B’Elanna can take over – “

 

“No, no, it’s my responsibility.  And I’m failing at it –“

 

“That’s not true – “

 

She swung around and Chakotay could finally see the dried tracks of tears painted on her cheeks.

 

“You don’t understand!  Every time I feed him, he won’t latch on!  It hurts!  And I’m not producing enough milk!  But every time I try to eat, my stomach feels like it’s filled with rocks and cramps up!  I can’t sleep -”

 

“Then we’ll feed him formula and have you sleep in another room – “

 

“No!  You don’t get it!  I can hear him cry…even when he’s not crying!  Chakotay, I haven’t slept for _ten days_ – “

 

“How can that be – “

 

“I close my eyes, but I never lose consciousness.  I’ve been faking it – “

 

“Why??  Why didn’t you tell me?”

 

Kathryn’s eyes burst forth with a fresh batch of tears, her face overflowing with despair.

 

“BECAUSE I DON’T WANT TO FAIL!”

 

Chakotay took another step towards his wife.

 

She flinched.

 

“No!  Leave me, Chakotay.”

 

“I’m not going to do that, Kathryn.  If you let down that force field, both of us will be sucked out into space and Demothi will be an orphan…”

 

Her face crumpled in agony.  Taking advantage of the distraction he caused, Chakotay moved in quickly, grabbed her from the edge of the bay and hugged her limp body to him fiercely.

 

“Computer, seal the shuttle bay and transfer all of Captain Janeway’s command codes to Commander Chakotay.  Authorization Maquis omega theta two.”

 

As the bay doors closed, he dragged them both to a safe spot far from the edge and sunk them to the floor where he cradled her upper body in his arms.  It was unsettling how much Kathryn resembled their son in that moment.  

 

The downward spiral from indomitable captain to fragile mother had been too sudden.

 

*    *    *

 

From the beginning, it hadn’t been the best laid plans.

 

Kathryn and Chakotay had become lovers on New Earth during the second month stranded on the planet.  It had been the culmination of an unexpected courtship and neither had been prepared enough to recall the last time their boosters had been updated.  Their passion for each other had clouded their reasoning and the finality of losing their shipmates and command had left Kathryn unsure of her new role and in desperate need of human touch.

 

Tuvok’s hail to call them back to Voyager had been a surprise, but nothing was more life-changing than the week Kathryn missed her period.  After the Doctor confirmed her pregnancy, she called Chakotay to her ready room already certain of what the outcome would be.  It was irresponsible, she reasoned, to have a child 70,000 light years from home.  And it was unfair to ask her first officer to take on a burden so early in their relationship.

 

Kathryn was sure that Chakotay would agree with the plans to abort the embryo, but his face showed ambivalence.  Just as quickly, it reverted back to its usual stoicism.  After a long pause, he offered to support her in whatever decision she made.

 

From that moment on, Kathryn expected Chakotay to distance himself from her.  Instead, the opposite occurred.  He asked her to every meal; if their eating times didn’t coincide, he’d take her to the mess hall, watched as she picked at her food and tried to cheer her up with the usual conversation.  He was attentive, thoughtful and never once brought up her decision.

 

The days turned into weeks and still, Kathryn hadn’t made an appointment with the Doctor.  She lost herself in off-duty time with Chakotay.  Their conversations drifted more towards the personal.  She shared bits of herself that few closest to her knew.  In return, he was open with his family history, his beliefs, and his passions.

 

One morning in the mess hall, Chakotay brought Kathryn her usual cup of coffee, but she declined it.  She asked instead for a mug of hot cocoa, saying the chocolate would ease her stomach more than the caffeine.

 

The commander got up and changed her order without thinking twice about it and as he came back to their table, she found herself staring at the black-grey patches in his military cut.  As he sorted through the PADDs in front of him, she marveled at how he could just be like this – quiet, not needing anything but to be in her presence – and something profound punched her deep within.

 

“Chakotay?”

 

“Hmm?”

 

He brought his mug of tea to his lips and glanced up.

 

“Do you want something to eat?”

 

He was about to get up when Kathryn placed her palm on top of his hand to make him still.

 

“I want to keep it.”

 

She could feel the tears threatening to fall, but gulped them back, waiting.

 

Suddenly, the broadest smile he could ever give spread across his face.  He closed his eyes.  When he opened them again, Chakotay took both of her hands in his.

 

“I’m so glad you said that.”

 

*    *    *

 

_This has to be your decision.  If you choose to go after him, I know I speak for the entire crew – Starfleet and Maquis alike – that we’ll stand behind you._

 

After Kathryn had managed to get another fire going with a lock of her hair as kindling, she sat alone before the flames, watching them grow higher – her thoughts dissipating in the air with each lick of heat – instead of alerting other crewmen to her success.

 

She needed a moment to pull herself together.  There had been so much to process.  The Kazon attacks, Seska’s betrayal, their abandonment on the prehistoric planet.  And the child.

 

Chakotay’s child.

 

Without realizing it, Kathryn knelt before the flames with her hand on her flat stomach as she tried to deal with conflicting emotions.  He was off somewhere with other crewmen, busy gathering what they could of stones – a suggestion given by Neelix that would better trap the warmth of the impromptu hearths they had created.  Everything had happened too quickly, but she knew from the various glances the crew gave her during the day’s ordeal that they wondered about her feelings.

 

By now, everyone knew of their relationship.  They just didn’t know about the little bit extra laying in wait within her womb.   She could imagine that their looks of pity were more about ‘the other woman’ than the other woman’s child.

 

And the command team hadn’t had a moment to themselves to talk about it.  Kathryn focused on duty, her role as captain – certainly not that of wife and future mother.  She keenly felt how difficult it was to separate these new facets of her life as she helped Samantha and Naomi struggle through the rough terrain.  And she found herself thinking of Naomi first when they found water or food.  It was irresponsible.  She had the lives of all her crew to consider and she had no idea if Tom’s plan would really work.  As captain, Kathryn could afford to coldly see Naomi as more of a burden than a useful, necessary member of the crew.  But she was now a mother herself, unable to act merely on the basis of logic, and she cursed the ambivalent feelings the fetus within her stirred up.

 

As if on cue, Tuvok appeared across from her, a makeshift bundle hanging from his shoulder, the arms of his jacket having been tied together to form a sling that held large pieces of volcanic rock.

 

With an unreadable face, he knelt down before her and began placing the stones around the fire.

 

“Thank you, Tuvok.”

 

Her hand had quickly gone back to her knee as she raised herself up.

 

“Captain, I have noticed a contemplative demeanor on your part and would like to offer my counsel.”

 

“Is it that obvious?”

 

“Only to a Vulcan.”

 

He lied.  She appreciated it.

 

“Not quite my ready room, but I suppose it will have to do.”

 

She sat down again and gestured to one of the boulders next to her, trusting that his keen sense of hearing would alert her should someone happen upon them unexpectedly.

 

“I would not presume to know your thoughts without a mind meld, but I sense that you may be too enervated to express your specific concerns.”

 

“Concerns?  About our survival on this planet?  The hostile environment?”

 

“About the Commander.  And your relationship.”

 

She chuckled and shook her head.

 

“Apparently, you _don’t_ need a mind meld, Mr. Tuvok – “

 

“I apologize – “

 

“No, no.  You are my most trusted friend and advisor.  You can get away with such presumptions without a reprimand.  And you’re right.  I’m too tired to spell it all out, but I’m not too tired to see that you have something important to say.  So out with it.”

 

He sat back on his rump, clasped both hands and stared beyond her shoulder, his forked brows furrowed.

 

“I would like to examine how many lies Seska has told us so far.”

 

“I’m listening.”

 

“First, she claimed that Cullah was angry at learning of the child’s existence and was going to take him from her.”

 

“That’s the first lie.”

 

“Later, Tierna had claimed that Seska was dead.”

 

“That’s two.”

 

“When they boarded the ship, Cullah believed that Chakotay had physically raped Seska to conceive the child.”

 

“What’s your point, Tuvok?”

 

“My point, Captain, is that Seska is capable of deceit on many levels.  Therefore, logic dictates that this child is more than likely _not_ the Commander’s offspring.”

 

She smiled and knew her eyes were shiny in the firelight.

 

“I appreciate you trying to make me feel better, but – “

 

“If I may be so bold, Captain, what I impart is not meant to dispel fear or ambivalence.  As a spy, I learned that humans are incapable of utilizing logic to that end.  Cardassians are no better.  It makes sense that Seska’s irrational love for the Commander has driven her to use Cullah and the Kazon in a futile attempt to damage him further.  It appears she is not content merely with her beliefs or her alliance with another Delta Quadrant species.

 

“And one does not need logic to know that the Commander has devoted himself in many ways to your survival – not just of the combined crew – but to you, his Captain and his _chosen_ companion.”

 

“Thank you, my friend.”  The last sentence was barely above a whisper.

 

The stoicism she’d grown to expect wavered a bit, but it wasn’t because of her.

 

“Commander.”

 

Kathryn turned to see Chakotay walking towards the fire, one of his hands behind his back.

 

“Tuvok.”

 

The Vulcan eyed his captain carefully and she gave him a nod.

 

“I will relieve Ensign Kim.  I believe his watch is over.  Evening, Captain, Commander.”

 

Chakotay sat on the rock Tuvok had recently vacated and after making sure the coast was clear, opened the hand that had been behind his back to reveal three small eggs.

 

“Chakotay, I can’t –“

 

“You have no idea what I did to distract Neelix to get these – “

 

“Then give them back without letting him know – “

 

“I won’t let the mother of my child go hungry.”

 

There.  He’d said it.

 

“Or my captain.  You still have a crew to lead and your strength to keep up.”

 

“I’d rather eat Neelix’s beetle stew, Commander, than dine on some poor creature’s offspring – “

 

“Now is not the time to become a vegetarian, _Captain._ ”

 

“Please.  Chakotay.  Don’t make this harder than it already is.”

 

He put the eggs gently on the rock next to them, a noticeable distance from the fire – not enough to cook them, but strangely enough to keep them warm.  He took her hands in his.

 

“Then let’s talk about what’s been bothering you the whole day.”

 

She looked down and noticed the dirt underneath his fingernails.

 

“The good news is that the morning sickness is practically non-existent.  And I might actually develop a craving for grubs…”

 

He eyed her to communicate that he found none of her attempts at humor funny.

 

“Chakotay, I can’t have you treating me any differently than the rest of the crew.”

 

“They’ve known since New Earth how different we both are.  No one thinks less of us.”

 

“Which is all the more reason why I can’t have you treating me differently.”

 

It was clear she wouldn’t budge.  If he wanted her to communicate, he was going to have to do things the Janeway way.

 

“All right, Captain.  It is my job as first officer to lighten your burden.  Care to brief me on the specifics?”

 

He expected the usual lopsided smirk or even a death glare, but she just kept staring at his hands.

 

“If we get back –“

 

“ ‘When’ we get back – “

 

“All right, ‘when.’  When we get back, what do you plan to do regarding Seska’s child?”

 

She looked up at him and he could feel the vulnerability in her searching eyes, grasping at him for something –

 

“Commander, Captain!”

 

They turned around. It was Neelix - balancing in his hands two steaming bowls of god-knows-what emanating foul smells from less than four meters away. 

 

“It’s not leola root, but it’s the best I could do under the circumstances.”

 

He handed each of the command team a hollowed out gourd.

 

Kathryn wrinkled up her nose.

 

“What is it?”

 

Neelix clenched his teeth through a forced smile.

 

“Don’t ask.  But I promise you that it has quite a bit of protein in it.”

 

Both the captain and commander struggled to keep their distaste in check and set their bowls down.

 

“Thank you, Neelix,” offered Chakotay, before handing over the three eggs, “Here–“ he winked in response to the Talaxian’s question mark of a look, “Don’t ask.”

 

When they were alone again, Kathryn brought the gourd up to her mouth and struggled to sip the fluid.

 

“I’m not sure how much my body will take to this prehistoric diet.  Maybe we’d be better off if I miscarried –“

 

He silenced her by bringing up a finger to her lips. 

 

She finally looked up and saw the tears in his eyes.

 

“We’ll make this work, Kathryn.  No matter what happens – “

 

Before she could ask him to continue their previous line of questioning, Mike Ayala appeared.  He wanted to know how to protect the solar stills from nocturnal animals.  Soon, the two men left to deal with yet another dilemma as Dalby approached them both.

 

The last thing Kathryn remembered was lying on her side, gazing into the fire, curled up in a fetal position.

 

*    *    *

 

She woke to his snoring, spooning form behind her – one of his arms beneath her neck like a pillow and the other protectively encircled around her waist.

 

The sky surrounding camp was rosy and the hearth’s embers glowed to match the tinted rays.  Four sleeping crewmen were lying on the ground, as close to the fire as they could manage without getting burned.

 

Kathryn’s eyes focused on a sitting blonde figure in teal and black and realized that it was Samantha Wildman.  She was eyeing both her and Chakotay with what seemed like envy.

 

As the women met each other’s gaze, the young ensign smiled, looked down at Naomi, and held her daughter more tightly to her than ever.

 

In one moment, Kathryn realized she didn’t need affirmation of Chakotay’s commitment.  How could she question such a thing when the one mother who could understand her was 70,000 light years away from the man she loved?

 

*    *    *

 

“I’m not coming out.”

 

They were late to the morning’s first briefing and Chakotay had spent the last five minutes in front of their bedroom door in what felt like a hostage negotiation.

 

“Kathryn, this is ridiculous.  How bad can it be?”

 

Bringing his ear to the door, he could hear the muffled, angry rustling of fabric.

 

“How many styles did you replicate?” he prodded gently.

 

“Too many,” her voice felt small, “Go without me.”

 

Exasperated, Chakotay tugged at his earlobe and tried to key in any number of his codes into the door.

 

“Don’t make me erect a level ten force field,” she warned, her tone back at full command, “Just go.”

 

“Kathryn, you knew this day would come.  And you’ve been complaining the last few weeks that you look fat instead of pregnant.  I thought you’d be happy.”

 

Chakotay thought back to the early hours of the morning, when he marveled at how the swell of her ‘baby bump’ took both his hands to cover it instead of one.  Kathryn had taken to sleeping on her right side after finding out that this was the best position for the child.  He loved tracing the curve of her spine and the dimples that settled above each buttock.  Her breasts swelled, filling out her already womanly figure.  And her skin glowed –

 

“Damn it, Chakotay!  I’m sweating in this material!  My armpits are drenched!  I’ll meet you in the conference room in fifteen minutes,” she groaned despairingly, “After I’ve scraped the bulkheads for whatever captainly dignity I have left, that is.”

 

“Are you sure, my love?”

 

“It’s an order, _Commander_.”

 

*    *    *

 

Kathryn walked briskly down the corridors, trying in vain to keep herself from meeting the eyes of anyone who passed her. 

 

After the first few stabs at pretending that nothing below her neck was different, she took the nervous, painted-on smiles and wandering eyes that greeted her as more discomfiting than any crewmember had intended them to be and quickly adopted a business-as-usual, nothing-to-see-here scowl on her face instead.

 

She tried to swing her hips to give her the confidence she needed, but found the habit had now exaggerated the maternity waddle she’d developed – the shiny new flat-soled boots she wore not helping her out in this department one iota.

 

After her walk of shame led her to the turbo lift, she counted the precious seconds before reaching deck one and the bridge, whereupon she strode past alpha shift with barely a grim head nod before stepping in front of the conference room door.

 

As it opened, she finally exhaled and met the senior staff with what she hoped was her usual, professional expression of both ‘thank you for coming’ and ‘don’t mess with me today.’

 

*    *    *

 

From the moment she set foot in the conference room, Chakotay thought she had never looked more beautiful. 

 

He was the only person who knew of her frailties - the sometimes frustrating, yet goofy way she worried about the silliest things.  And the way she carried herself that morning – as they plowed through each departmental report with precision and speed – no one could tell how nervous he knew she really was.

 

But that didn’t mean that no one noticed.

 

Kathryn was decked out in full Starfleet maternity wear, the cape-like jacket covering the expanse of her belly like one giant red alert.

 

For the past few weeks, she’d continually expanded the waist of her uniform and the size of her jacket until she was practically drowning in a sea of fabric.  He didn’t have the heart to tell her that the crew had sensed something amiss long ago.  She had blindly hoped the crew would believe the command team’s personal union had made for a happy, albeit sweet-toothed happy captain.  Yet at the same time, she hated looking swollen.

 

It was as though she’d seen herself through a distorted mirror.  To Chakotay, Kathryn’s transformation from indomitable waif to voluptuous spitfire had only added to his attraction for her.  Their decision to have this baby meant more to him than she could ever understand.  It meant that not only did she trust him to take care of her crew; it also meant she trusted him to take care of her.

 

Nevertheless, she had briefed him last night on what was about to happen this morning.  And under no circumstances was he to come to her rescue.

 

At this point in the meeting – after ignoring the various sidelong glances Tom gave B’Elanna and Harry’s constant throat-clearing (Tuvok and the Doctor seemed to be the only individuals whose stoicism could be believed) – Kathryn dismissed everyone.  But only just.

 

As each confused member of the senior staff slowly swiveled around in their chair and rose to their feet, a smiling Chakotay sat rooted to his spot as he felt Kathryn’s hand come down on his shoulder.

 

“Oh, before you go.  There is _one_ last order of business.”

 

The air in the room stood stock-still as everyone returned to their seats.  Several pairs of eyes couldn’t help but focus on her burgeoning belly.

 

“The Commander and I would like to announce that yes, as the quaint saying goes, we are indeed pregnant,” she couldn’t help but give him the firm, but loving once-over, “Although I’m not sure how _you_ share this particular calamity with me…”

 

Harry was about to open his mouth to express congratulations, but what burst forth sounded more like a barnyard hee haw from one of the mules Kathryn remembered from her childhood days than a benediction.

 

Expecting just as much, she ignored it and moved on.

 

“That having been said,” Kathryn walked out from beyond the table and began pacing the length of carpet in front of the console, “I expect that each and every crewmember on board this ship give me no special treatment.”

 

She pointedly glared at him then.

 

“And I do mean that.  No. Special. Treatment.”  She resumed her rapid, dizzying gait, “That means that in a hostile takeover of the ship or alien conflict, you will not – I repeat – _will not_ rush to my aid.  No matter what gestational month I happen to be in.”

 

Tuvok seemed to regard the instructions as status quo, whereas from the remote view screen, the Doctor looked about ready to burst a holographic blood vessel.  Everyone else was understandably stunned silent – or too scared to risk a peep.

 

“Tuvok, you and I will run tactical drills to take into account my new…center of gravity …and compensate for it accordingly – “

 

“Aye, Captain.”

 

“Your commanding officer will be able to protect herself in whatever situation arises, on ship or off.  My duties will not waver and I will endeavor to serve you without fail and without hesitation.  I expect to be treated with the same scrutiny I have given you over the last two years.  I am proud to serve with the finest crew – Maquis and Starfleet – of my career.  I only hope to earn the same pride from you.  Dismissed.”

 

The second to last sentence had been a surprise for Chakotay.  The previous night, she had rehearsed her speech with him while standing on the edge of their bed, a toothbrush half out of her gloriously wonderful mouth.  But this last bit of…sentiment…was unexpected.  If he hadn’t known better, he could’ve sworn he’d heard her voice catch near the end.

 

She cleared her throat and her eyes brightened, signaling that there was no more left to say.

 

Everyone in the room shot out of their seats at once, nodding to the command team with smiles and patting Chakotay on the back wordlessly.  He’d expected as much; both knew how life-shattering this bit of news would be on a stranded ship – even if it was as well-equipped as Voyager.  The fact remained that a choice had been made.  Time would tell if the crew would accept it with aplomb.

 

As they filed out of the conference room and the senior staff relieved the replacement alpha shift on the bridge, Chakotay took Kathryn’s hand for just a moment – a moment that no one else was able to see.  For a split second, he squeezed her shaking palm and just as quickly after reciprocating, she let his go.  A few seconds later, he visually checked to see and sure enough, the quaking had stopped.

 

Kathryn sat down in the big chair as Ensign Wildman – having fulfilled her duty and was now off to check on Naomi – stopped before her, standing a little off to the side.  She smiled then.

 

“Congratulations, Captain.”

 

For the first time that morning, a high-wattage grin broke out on Kathryn’s face – full of both relief and gratitude.

 

“Thank you, Samantha.”

 

It was exactly what both women needed.

 

*    *    *

 

 _“So_ that’s _why they moved in together.”_

 

Kathryn had been replacing the plasma relays on deck ten – a task she sometimes did to be alone and clear her mind – when she’d heard a female voice echo in from the Jeffries tube below. 

 

After the tense briefing that morning, she needed to regroup.  The mindless work was doing its job; she had been on her way to relaxing.  So far, the senior staff had taken the news of her pregnancy rather well.  She felt her confidence return with each task she took on that day.

 

Until now.

 

 _“You’d think the almighty Janeway, stickler for protocol, would have at least remembered her boosters –“_ Another female voice, deeper in timbre, commented further.

 

 _“Maybe,”_ the younger-sounding one’s tone rose as though she’d found the answer to everything, _“Maybe the Captain did it on purpose!”_

 

 _“That’s_ horrible _!”_

_“Kind of ingenious, if you ask me.”_

Kathryn finally placed a name, a posture, a face – to the voice.

 

_“Jenny, you’re just jealous.”_

 

 _“_ Me _?  No way.  I may not have graduated top of my class, but at least I know how_ not _to get pregnant.”_

_“Well, it doesn’t matter how or why she did it,”_ the older woman said, _“After losing Seska’s baby, this is probably exactly what he wanted.”_

 

Jenny sighed then, _“He would make a great father.  Don’t know about her, though.”_

 

With that, both women chuckled. 

 

As their footfalls grew louder, Kathryn could tell they were heading her way.  She closed the panel from where she had been working, gathered up the remaining tools, closed the kit and quickly made her way out through the opposite side.

 

If it had been any situation other than her own – about any other issue – Kathryn would have stayed, called both women on the carpet and made their lives hell for the next week.

 

No, for the first time since her Academy days, the Captain keenly felt as though she were back in high school – a vulnerable time in her life she’d rather forget.

 

*    *    *

 

 _Light up your face with gladness_  
Hide every trace of sadness  
Although a tear may be ever so near  
That’s the time you must keep on trying  
Smile

 _What’s the use of crying?_  
You’ll find that life is still worthwhile  
If you just smile  
  


*    *    *

 

The corridor on deck three leading to their shared quarters was thankfully empty.  There had been no point in trying to be useful in engineering and her presence on the bridge only made the beta shift crew more nervous than they already were around her. 

 

She ended up at the door and stood before it, waiting for the sensors to read her presence.  Kathryn sighed with relief.  It was time to come home - to just her and Chakotay.

 

The doors whooshed open and she was immediately hit with noise at a cocktail party level –

 

“Captain!  Congratulations!!”  Neelix engulfed her in a teetering hug and she planted both feet firmly on the ground to steady herself.

 

In that moment, Kathryn realized that she would have to get used to this embrace, especially now that a certain tiny someone would constantly be in-between.

 

Peering over Neelix’s shoulder, she surveyed the room – which left little open space.  Tom was by the music console.  B’Elanna was standing next to a gigantic cellophane covered basket tied with lavender ribbon.  Kes stood closest to her Talaxian partner, a woven item in a bamboo shade that was fading along the edges to a buttery yellow.

 

Somewhere in the back – if Kathryn stood on tiptoe – she could see her husband, a sheepish smile of apology on his face.

 

Chakotay shrugged.  She frowned at him, but forced a grin for everyone else’s benefit just as quickly.

 

“Thank you, Neelix,” she stepped back and looked around the room, “Did I miss the invitation or is there a briefing I didn’t know about?” she joked.

 

Kes bounded forth first.  She turned the woven item around so that Kathryn could finally see the purple knitted blanket – what looked to be as soft and warm as cashmere – folded carefully within it.

 

“I did some research on Terran infants and made a ‘Moses basket’ out of the sturdier ferns growing in airponics.  I also wove in a bit of Riwarian cardamom.  It’s long-lasting and soothing and will help the baby sleep.”

 

Kathryn was sure that if she met the young Ocampa’s eager-to-please gaze, her composure would crumble, so she concentrated on the workmanship instead.

 

“Kes, this is remarkable!  Every detail - it’s beautiful.  It must have taken you forever – “

 

“I just thought of that wonderful child growing inside of you and how much it will add to the Voyager family.  The time flew by.”

 

Oh God, she was going to cry.  Kathryn swallowed and her eyes flicked over to Chakotay. 

 

He could tell that something was wrong and his smile quickly turned downward with concern.

 

Neelix presented her with a PADD.

 

“I did a little Terran research as well – specifically on prenatal nutrition.  I’ve downloaded a few recipes – all rich in folic acid, calcium, everything good for a growing baby.  You can pick and choose what you like.  And if leola root exacerbates morning sickness, I’ll make sure to keep that out of the menu until the child is born.”

 

For a moment, she almost snorted out a laugh.  Kathryn’s pregnancy had long gone past the morning-sickness phase, but she was not about to waste her good fortune and tell him the truth.  She nodded soberly.

 

“Make sure that you do that, Mr. Neelix,” Kathryn ignored the throat-clearing she heard from the back, knowing full well that Chakotay had noticed everything.

 

Tom was next, as he weaved past Kes and Neelix.  He handed her the data chip.

 

“I know the Doc has already given you a selection of opera, but just in case that doesn’t work – for you or the baby – I gleaned my music database for some 20th century jazz standards,” Tom reached over to the table nearest him and produced a palm-sized player with headphones.

 

For a moment, the pilot seemed unsure of what to do.  Fortunately, Kathryn could guess.  She took the headphones, gave him back the chip – which he placed in the player – and as the muffled first notes drifted out, placed the headphones on either side of her belly.

 

Kathryn made the mistake of glancing up at Tom’s expression and caught the look of wonder on his face.  Her eyes filled, but then just as suddenly, she felt it.

 

The first kick.

 

It was beyond anything she’d ever imagined.  Reflexively, she wanted to sit down and immerse herself in the new sensation, but the day’s confusion made it difficult to sort out her feelings, her wants, her needs.

 

Kathryn looked up at Chakotay, yearning so much to tell him and share the moment, but realized that in such a crowded room, there could be no intimacy.  She swallowed the lump in her throat and removed the headphones, giving them back to Tom.

 

“Thank you, Mr. Paris.  It’s a thoughtful, wonderful gift.  I’m sure I’ll wear a groove in the chip –“

 

B’Elanna burst forth, as though she had been on the tips of her toes with anticipation the entire time.  She carried the unwieldy gift basket in her arms and peeked from around the side.

 

“It’s from all of us in engineering.  They wanted to give you diapers and bottles and clothes, but I figured you’d want to pamper yourself before the tyke makes its big appearance – “

 

Kathryn took the basket and saw the bath salts, bubbles, lotions, oils, creams, perfume and chocolates and this time, she had to close her eyes tightly before a flood of tears broke forth.

 

“Kathryn?”

 

She heard Chakotay and soon, he was at her side.

 

“Are you all right?”

 

“I’m fine.  Just a little headache,” Kathryn squinted, brought her thumb and middle finger to either side of her temples and faked it as well as she could until the emotional moment passed.

 

When she looked up again, the doors suddenly whooshed open to reveal Tuvok carrying a PADD and yet another gift box.

 

“Commander, Captain,” he began.  For a Vulcan, he looked a bit bemused, harried even, “I come by to offer you wishes of well-being –“

 

This time, Chakotay took the data device and began scrolling down.

 

“It is an exercise regimen,” Tuvok explained, “Based on the briefing this morning and upon reviewing the duty roster, I have taken it upon myself to schedule holodeck time in which to help the Captain ready herself for battle should Voyager come under attack during her gestational period.”

 

Thank God for her resident Vulcan.  His dry demeanor centered Kathryn immediately.

 

“Thank you, Tuvok,” she offered him the usual lopsided smile, “I’m just curious, however –“

 

“Yes, Captain?”

 

“If all of you are here,” she made a sweeping motion with her right arm to encompass the senior staff in the room, “ _Who_ is on the bridge minding the store?”

 

Tuvok’s frown deepened.  And everyone seemed to shift their weight from one foot to the other.

 

Finally, Tom looked up guiltily.

 

“Harry?”

 

Kathryn chuckled, shaking her head upon remembering how flustered the young ensign had been that morning.  She was probably the last person he wanted to be around.

 

“That poor boy –“

 

Tuvok then handed over the box.  It was medium-sized and looked as though it had been meticulously wrapped.

 

“This is from Ensign Kim.”

 

Kathryn tore apart the ribbon and paper and pried open the lid to reveal a threadbare, careworn, stuffed white tiger.  Its pink nose was dull and covered in scratches.  The face was missing one blue eye and the whiskers on the right side were bent and frayed.  The fur was faded in spots, but she could tell that it had been carefully cleaned recently.  And it had a warm, inviting smell that Kathryn couldn’t quite place.

 

She pulled out the stuffed animal to reveal a folded piece of rough card stock at the bottom.  After handing the tiger to Chakotay, Kathryn began to read:

 

_Dear Captain,_

_I’m sorry I couldn’t come up with something more original – especially after finding out what everyone else was planning to do – but I wanted to give your daughter or son an item I’ve had since_ I _was a child.  I know it’s not shiny-new and perfect, but please accept this humble gift._

_You see, my mom bought me this stuffed animal the first time our family visited the San Diego Zoo and I’ve slept with it ever since.  I know, I know._ ‘What’s a grown operations officer doing sleeping with toys?’ _is probably what you’re thinking, but this tiger has always given me comfort.  And it’s something from Home._

_I hope he or she will find it comforting, too._

_Sincerely,_

_Harry Kim_

 

Her heart dropped and she felt the flood of emotion break over her form.  Kathryn’s shoulders sagged and her shaking hands dropped the card.  She closed her eyes tightly to contain the wetness growing behind the lids and pressed her fingers to them in case they flew open of their own accord.

 

“Captain?”

 

Neelix’s voice could be heard amidst the shuffling in the room.  They were gathering around her now; she could feel their collective body heat.  They were wonderful; they were trying so hard.  But after the stray gossip she’d overheard that evening, Kathryn could never be sure what any gesture meant.  And it killed her spirit to know something about Harry that made her feel even more responsible for stranding the crew in the Delta Quadrant.

 

She had been a fool.  How could she indulge in happiness that was denied everyone else?

 

“It’s all right, Mr. Neelix.  It’s just my regular migraine.  It’s been that kind of day.”

 

She could feel Chakotay put his arm around her, his right hand squeezing her shoulder once.  He had the whole routine down pat; amongst these people, he was her first officer and an embrace was a private thing, not public.  Nevertheless, she could feel the tension rising from his hold on her.

 

“Well, thank you, everyone.  But as you can see, the Captain needs her rest – as I expect all of you to consider for yourselves as well.”

 

Kathryn lifted her heavy head, keeping her eyes closed and gulping down the lump in her throat.

 

“Yes, thank you all – so much.  You’ve made a fine cap to the end of the day.  I appreciate the thought that went into every gift.”

 

As everyone filed out, Kathryn took the toy from Chakotay and –with blurred vision – made her way to the couch, the stuffed tiger clasped between both arms over her swollen belly.

 

By the time the door whooshed shut and Chakotay picked up Harry’s card and turned around, he found his wife sitting on the edge of their sofa, sobbing into the soft, black-and-white patches of fur.

 

*    *    *

 

He’d immediately moved to sit beside her - rubbing her back as it shook - while reading the young ensign’s words to try and connect it with her reaction.

 

“Kathryn, is it because he mentioned ‘Home’?”

 

He put the card aside, reached over to the side table and retrieved the box of tissues, placing it gently between them.

 

Kathryn finally lifted her head and sunk into the crook of Chakotay’s armpit to let him embrace her.  It took her a long moment to pull out a few scraps and blow her nose, so she replied with only a wordless nod.

 

“You miss your family?  Gretchen –?”

 

As she soaked the corners of her eyes, Chakotay could see her face crumple beneath the translucent veil.  She nodded again, followed by a sharp head shake of contradiction.

 

“Yes, but that’s not why I’m upset,” she swallowed and took a deep breath, “It’s because I suddenly realize how much all of the crew miss Home, not just me.  It’s selfish to create a family out here, to have a child, a relationship – “

 

“What??”  Chakotay took the card and waved it between them, “ _That’s_ what you took from Harry’s words?  That you have no right to be…. _happy_?  Excuse me, Kathryn, but that’s bullshit.”

 

Her look in reply was of surprise, which quickly transformed into anger.  He anticipated as much –

 

“Kathryn, from the beginning, you wanted our relationship to be about honesty.  And you said you loved me for knowing the right way to love you.  And the right way to love you is to _not_ let you pity yourself for something that isn’t there, that doesn’t exist.  When he accepted his commission, Ensign Kim gave you his allegiance; today, _Harry_ gave you his heart.  He’s telling you that he no longer needs something from Home to comfort him.  He _is_ Home.”

 

She was listening.  Because his words made her cry anew.

 

“My love, everything tonight shows you that you have nothing to worry about.  All those months of anxiety – wondering how the staff would take it.  Tonight, they showed you their love, their support – “

 

“Not everyone feels this way.”  Her icy tone hit him then.

 

“Tell me.  Something happened between this and the last time I saw you.  I could see it when you walked in.”

 

Kathryn moved away from his embrace and he frowned as she removed his arm from around her shoulder.  She then started tearing the dampened tissues into tiny bits.

 

“I overheard Jenny Delaney and another member of the crew…talking about our…situation.”

 

Chakotay’s expression darkened further - already guessing what she was about to say - but let her continue.

 

“She thinks it was careless.  And I agree; it was.  She thinks I got myself pregnant on purpose and that the only reason why we’re together is because you lost your chance to have a child with Seska and you want to do the right thing by me….”

 

He sighed deeply, hunched over and sunk his face into both hands, elbows resting on either knee.

 

“Jenny Delaney is a Vicious. Jealous. Gossip.” - was his muffled, yet staccato reply before straightening up on the couch and turning himself to her with an empathetic, gentle smile.

 

“Kathryn, you may not know this – and I would never mention it because it’s not in my nature to brag – but B’Elanna’s biggest joke is the inventory of young women on Voyager who have a crush on me.  Jenny is at the top of that list.  So consider the source before you ascribe the yammering of immature undesirables to anything based in truth -”

 

The few pieces of torn tissue had become a pile of confetti in her lap despite his words.  She didn’t look up at him.

 

“But it made me realize something, Chakotay.  It made me realize that no matter what the crew says, what they do, they will always hide their true feelings – “

 

“ _Kathryn_ –“ the exasperation was starting to show in his tone.

 

She put her hand on his knee for emphasis.

 

“No, listen to me.  If I were them, I’d feel the same way:  ‘She’s a Starfleet Captain.  She has a duty to getting us home just as we have a duty to serve that purpose.  Who is she to want it all – command and personal life – when we can’t have it ourselves?’”

 

He took her hand and engulfed it in both of his own.

 

“Love, you have never instituted such restrictions and maybe it’s time to clarify to everyone that they aren’t there.  You know what I think they’re thinking?  And I do believe the majority of the crew _are_ on our side.  They’re thinking ‘She’s human; just like me.  And if she can be happy, so can I.’ It’s that simple, Kathryn.  I refuse to let you put Jenny Delaney’s opinion on a higher shelf than the actions of your senior staff who – realistically - are far more important than she is.”

 

He mistook a long pause for agreement, because what she said next surprised him in its incongruence.

 

“Regardless of whether or not they support us, they’ll wonder if we really love each other.”

 

“Why should that matter?” he brought up his arms in frustration, his voice betraying weariness.

 

But as he observed her face clouding over, Chakotay’s anger bubbled to the surface upon recognizing the brittleness of her expression.  She believed everything Jenny had said.  All the poison, all the bile.

 

“It’s not them you’re worried about, is it?” he struggled not to let the hurt show, but his words came out clipped, full of pain, “You’re worried that _I_ don’t love you.”

 

She shrugged as though she didn’t care what happened next.

 

“That’s _it_?” he was incredulous, “Kathryn, after everything we’ve gone through – “

 

“I know.  And it has been a burden.  You aren’t obligated to – “

 

He got up roughly and began to pace in front of the coffee table to dispel his anger.

 

“No, no, _no_.  You do not turn this around.  You will _not_ twist my words to fit the mood you’re in.  I thought I only had to say this once – when we were on New Earth – but I found myself saying it again, after Seska’s betrayal.  And I will say it again, and again, and again, and AGAIN, until you believe with your heart and mind – your entire being – that I love _you_ and you alone and that the reason why I want us to have this baby is _because_ of that and _that_ alone.”

 

He pushed the table aside so that he could move her legs apart and kneel between them.  He took both sides of her face in his hands and tilted her head, searching for her gaze until she could no longer deny him.

 

“Remember that night?  The night we conceived this little one?  How we made love _six times_?  Because I remember every moment.  Every nuance.  How it changed from a level of urgency and longing I have never known to this quiet, peaceful coupling.  A coupling that eradicated every violent urge I’ve ever had to avenge my homeland.  A union that covered up the black scar on my heart and made me want to feel again.  _You_ did that, my love.  You.  Not this baby.  You came before this baby.  Our love came before this baby.  Our love _made_ this baby.”

 

Kathryn met his eyes and finally saw how wet they had become, saw the desperation in his need to be understood, for her to believe what he believed.  Suddenly, the hitched breaths she had held back caught up with one another, rolling forth as ball after ball of pain unfurled themselves.

 

She sobbed as their foreheads touched.  Chakotay raised his lips to each closed eye and kissed them, sipping of the brine that flooded forth in one long continuous stream.  He drank until his lips were salty from both her tears and his own.  And with each caress, he felt her empty the tension, worry and heartache she had held inside for too long. 

 

There had been no time to deal with the questions, the insecurities, the random thoughts that entered and plagued Kathryn’s mind.  And he hoped - more than anything - that what he’d said could make the pain subside, if not forever, just long enough until they could take their next breath, accomplish the next mission, travel the next light year. 

 

Until they could find some measure of Home.

 

*    *    *

 

She’d let him draw a warm bath for her, wash her hair and then feed her chilled pasta salad and frozen bits of her favorite fruit.

 

She lay naked on the bed as he applied the lavender lotion from the gift basket to her back, her legs, arms and belly, letting the soothing aroma fill her senses.  And as he lay down naked next to her, spooning her from behind – the only way they could embrace in bed that would allow his face to come into contact with hers if she craned her neck back far enough – Kathryn felt the baby move.

 

It was a rolling motion over the uppermost part of her belly and without a second thought, she brought Chakotay’s hand over the place where she’d felt the ripple most and pressed down slightly.

 

Sure enough, the baby repeated the motion – but this time, in the opposite direction.

 

Kathryn heard him gasp, his lips a centimeter from her earlobe.

 

“Is…” his soft voice was loud in the darkness, “Is that the first time…?”

 

She wanted to tell him the truth – that it wasn’t – but in a split second, Kathryn realized that any ‘first time’ was one in which they were both present for it, when they had the good fortune of sharing it together.

 

“Yes, Chakotay.  It’s the first.  The first of many.”

 

It was the first time she’d felt truly safe in a man’s arms.  And as he propped himself up slightly, slipping his forearm under her neck, Kathryn turned her head and met his lips with a kiss that took its time - rising and falling to the ebb and flow of their child’s movements beneath their hands.

 


	2. Everything Happens To Me

*

 

 _I make a date for golf_  
And you can bet your life it rains  
I try to give a party  
And the guy upstairs complains  
I guess I’ll go through life  
Just catching colds and missing trains  
Everything happens to me  
  
*    *    *

 

B’Elanna wanted to pretend that she wasn’t hearing what she was hearing. 

 

It would have been easier to do so three years ago – when her loyalty had been to the Maquis and nothing else – but what she had been privy to at that precise moment made her Klingon blood boil over beyond the usual gradient allowed.

 

If only her combadge hadn’t been malfunctioning; B’Elanna would have been none the wiser.  She was working on the upper deck in engineering – repairing the antimatter containment field generator – when Megan Delaney had requested her opinion by remote on some issue she could have easily solved on her own. 

 

At the beginning of their combined journey, she’d had a problem with the lack of imagination some of the Fleeters in the crew were plagued with, but B’Elanna was secretly too intimidated by their numerous degrees, accolades and resumes to believe in the ingenuity of her own killer instinct.  Over the past year, however, her experience had proven to them that she could hold her own, but still – she’d held back when it came to chewing the young ensign’s head off at the nearest opportunity.

 

This time however, B’Elanna’s quick temper had been kept in check less by her own conscious effort and more by a challenging distraction.  The containment shield, a specialized force field that surrounded the warp core and prevented breaches during repair, had given her a rather practical – and if she allowed herself a premature pat on the back – genius idea. 

 

B’Elanna had felt her gift to the Captain had fallen short of ideal.  She knew from asking Chakotay personal questions that Kathryn enjoyed baths, but the gift basket of pampering items wasn’t enough.  And it hardly fit the engineering chief’s personality.  B’Elanna wanted to put more thought into a present for a woman she’d grown to admire, albeit – in the beginning – rather reluctantly.

 

So she handled Megan’s problem swiftly, ignored the easy mistakes the ensign had made, and topped her corrections off without the usual bit of scolding.  B’Elanna was saving her energy to invent something new; while she repaired the generator, she made notes and drew schematics on a data PADD that acted both as brain food and a calming exercise.  It was comforting to know that she still had the chops despite how incomplete her formal education had been.

 

She was finally finding her niche aboard Voyager.

 

Until now.

 

 _“What do you think of ‘Malia’?”_ a voice that could only belong to willful Jenny Delaney goaded her more malleable twin, _“In Zuni, the name means ‘sea of bitterness.’  Sounds just like her, doesn’t it?”_

A nauseating barrage of giggles reverberated over the comm line and B’Elanna could have sworn the negative energy would short out the signal at any moment.

 

As it turned out, Megan’s transmission had failed to shut off.  What the Chief of Engineering was now listening to was a level of gossip that ignited every protective nerve in her body.  Three years ago, B’Elanna wouldn’t have cared.  At that time, Kathryn Janeway was a non-entity.  But after watching the woman overcome obstacle after obstacle – in a way that the admiring half-Klingon would never freely express to just anyone – she’d developed a burgeoning kinship with the scientifically shrewd, headstrong captain.  Even as they butted craniums, B’Elanna knew deep within her bones that this woman was the only female on board the ship she could really trust, the only leader – other than Chakotay – she could truly rely on.

 

And Jenny Delaney was speaking about her as though she were the dirt embedded in the carpet under her feet.

 

So far, B’Elanna had gathered that the vapid ensign had compiled a list of Native American baby names in an effort to speculate on one that Chakotay or Janeway could end up giving their first born.  It became evident – after listening further – that Jenny’s interest was not well-meaning, but mean-spirited instead.

 

_“Or what about ‘Kimi’?  That means ‘secret.’  I wonder what the Algonquin word for ‘shame’ is.  I’ll have to look it up – “_

B’Elanna could eavesdrop no further.  She packed up her tools and began her short trip down the laddered shaft to main engineering.

 

Looking to her left as she landed firmly on the grate below, she spied the Delaney twins near the upper consoles.  Megan was firmly ensconced beneath one, her knees and calves visible, while Jenny sat next to her sister – sitting Indian-style in all its bitter irony – to her right, holding the data PADD in one hand.

 

“Oh, listen to this!” the detestable ensign brayed, “ ‘Kokyangwuti’ – it means ‘spider woman at middle age.’  Tom’s Captain Proton program – _Queen Arachnia_!” she practically shrieked, “Isn’t that _perfect?_ ”

 

Any predictable cackling was interrupted as a café au lait-tinted hand swooped down and grabbed Jenny’s PADD –

 

“Ensigns Delaney,” B’Elanna’s voice was low, but fraught with warning.

 

“Lieutenant!” Jenny immediately shot up to parade stance after jabbing her twin in the leg.

 

Within seconds, Megan joined her sister in identical expressions of fear.

 

Not used to calling subordinates on the carpet (or at least, not used to being fully in the right while doing so), B’Elanna relished her time pacing the length of floor in front of them.  She derisively eyed both women up and down – wondering what the Hell Tom and Harry saw in either one of them - while knowing full well which twin was which.  Jenny’s face betrayed a certain level of defiance under the practiced deference while Megan’s lips twitched with a barely-disguised embarrassment.

 

The half-Klingon knew without checking who the bully of the two was.

 

“Ensign Jennifer Delaney,” she began, “You will spend the next twelve hours cleaning the forward and aft landing gear on deck fourteen until it shines as brightly as Alpha Centauri.  You will run a thorough diagnostic – all seventy-seven subsets - _and_ recalibrate the program for Class L as well as Class M situations.  For every micrometer you are off, you will be docked fifty credits.  Understood?”

 

“Aye-aye, Lieutenant.”  Jenny’s mouth drew back in a slight scowl, aging her by a decade.

 

“Do you have a problem with that, ensign?” B’Elanna barked.

 

“No, ma’am!”

 

“And you, Ensign Megan Delaney,” her eyebrow shot up, creasing the skin where her ridges began, “You will be relegated to KP duty in the mess hall, peeling leola root for the next twelve hours.  And you will _both_ eat it raw for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Understood?”

 

What issued forth was a squeak or a squawk.

 

“Speak louder, Miss Delaney!”

 

“Aye-aye, Lieutenant.”

 

B’Elanna turned her back to them.  She couldn’t help but smirk – and if anyone dared to look, they would have sworn it resembled the same cocked expression as that of a certain auburn-haired captain.

 

“Get out of my sight.”

 

*    *    *

 

B’Elanna was holding a stack of four data PADDs in her hands, scrolling through and studying the uppermost one for her presentation when she rounded the corner on deck one and bumped into something solid –

 

“Oof!”

 

She fell to the floor and dropped everything.  Looking up, she scowled.

 

“Tom.”

 

His data device had been knocked out of his hands as well.  Paris smiled at her apologetically and offered an arm to help her up.

 

He then began to retrieve all five PADDs, but as he handed them back to her, his eye caught a title.

 

“Native American Baby Names,” he grinned wickedly.

 

Tom expected her to reach for it, so he turned his back before she could grasp it from his hands.

 

“That’s not mine, Paris!”

 

“Oh, really?”

 

He briskly walked ahead of her and entered the conference room. 

 

Thank Kahless, they were early.  The command team were the only people absent.  Harry was going over his own report, while Tuvok was entering a few files into the monitor’s console.

 

Despite B’Elanna’s escalating irritation, Tom began reciting various names off of Jenny’s PADD as they sat down next to Harry.

 

“How about the obvious – ‘Jacy’ means ‘moon.’ Get it?  J.  C.  _Jane_ way?  _Cha_ kotay?”

 

B’Elanna – deciding not to indulge him - stifled the quirk of her lip and punched him in the arm instead.

 

“Ow!”

 

“That’s lame.  Even for you, flyboy.”

 

Their heads came together over the PADD and Tom struggled to concentrate over the headiness of her perfume.  The one he had long considered to be his favorite.

 

“Okay, okay, seriously.  ‘Yuma’ means ‘chief’s son’ – assuming that they’re having a boy.  That sounds good.  Strong.”

 

Harry leaned over and smirked after realizing what the list was about.

 

“ ‘Yuma’?  That’s the name of an Alaskan malamute I had as a kid…Wait, go back,” he murmured, “I like ‘Elan.’  It means ‘friendly.’  Tom, where’d you get this?”

 

“Wasn’t me, Starfleet,” Paris gestured to B’Elanna and she took that moment to snatch the PADD back from him.

 

She gave both men a chastising look, but then her features softened into one that was a bit haughty.

 

“For a boy, I prefer ‘Demothi,’” B’Elanna had stressed the first syllable, rhyming it with ‘Timothy.’

 

Tom took back the PADD and looked at it, “Means ‘talks while walking.’  _That_ fits.  I mean, when are they not running around?  And they never shut up – _Oof!_ ”

 

She had given him a jab to the ribs and soon the list was back in her hands.

 

“For a girl, I think Chakotay would like ‘Leotie.’”

 

Harry leaned over and nodded, “ ‘Flower of the prairie.’  The Captain _is_ from Indiana…” the young ensign got up and looked over B’Elanna’s shoulder, “I like ‘Nadie’ – “

 

By this time, Tuvok had joined Harry to his right and was studying the PADD with his usual frown.

 

“Ensign, although that signifies ‘wise’ in Algonquin, it also means ‘no one’ in Spanish.”

 

“Oops.  Sorry.”

 

B’Elanna’s eyes lit up.

 

“ ‘ _Ka_ china.’”

 

The warmth in her voice startled Tom, who looked up at her then.

 

“That was my best friend’s name – from grade school,” she continued, dreamily, “It’s Hopi for ‘spirit.’  She certainly was a great spirit.”

 

A sad film layered itself over B’Elanna’s eyes like a cloud.  Paris opened his mouth and was about to ask more about her childhood friend when the conference room door swooshed open.

 

“Looks like everyone’s here,” Kathryn put her hands on her hips as Chakotay found his seat.

 

“Tuvok, connect with sick bay and we’ll start the meeting.”

 

*    *    *

 

The mid-morning conference was almost done and B’Elanna – her presentation long over - was too preoccupied with trouble-shooting the containment field schematics in her head to notice that everyone was staring at her.

 

“Well, Lieutenant?” 

 

Kathryn’s glare and tapping of her fingers told B’Elanna that she’d waited quite a while for an answer.

 

“I’m sorry, Captain – ?”

 

“I just asked for a copy of your report.  The Commander needs one as well, for the duty roster.”

 

“Of course!”

 

Feeling the heat of embarrassment rise from her neck to her cheeks, B’Elanna hurriedly gave the Captain and Chakotay each a PADD.

 

The command team examined the data with twin frowns.  Then Kathryn’s eyes went wide, before staring at B’Elanna with an unusually steely death glare.

 

“I’m sure this is a mistake, Lieutenant - unless giving the warp coil assembly a proper name somehow helps with your work,” she flashed the PADD at the hapless engineer, revealing that it was the one with the baby names on them.

 

Behind her, B’Elanna could here a throat-clearing that choked off a snort of laughter.  She couldn’t tell if it had come from Tom or Harry.  Either way, it didn’t help; the rest of the room having knowledge of the list wasn’t going to get B’Elanna a better reception. 

 

Chakotay looked over his wife’s shoulder, raised an eyebrow and merely grinned.  The Captain’s eyes narrowed.

 

“Miss Torres, you were present for the briefing about how things will not change despite certain, new…developments?  That a certain professionalism will prevail?”

 

B’Elanna felt the bitter rise of anger fill the sinuses underneath her ridges.  It wasn’t fair; it wasn’t even her PADD.  And now the Captain thought she’d been making light of her pregnancy – on ship’s time, no less.  Everything good the young woman had felt that morning was dashed in just one look, one reprimand.  She swallowed and tried not to clench her jaw – at least, not too hard.

 

“Yes, Captain.  I apologize.  It _won’t_ happen again.”

 

“Good. Dismissed.”

 

B’Elanna was the first out of her seat, after handing Kathryn the copy of her report as promised.  The Captain kept the list of baby names.

 

She was almost out the door with everyone else when a softer tone hit her from behind –

 

“Lieutenant Torres?”

 

B’Elanna turned, bracing herself for more of the worst.

 

“Thank you.  If you had approached me at any other time with this…but not here.”

 

“Understood, Captain.”

 

It was a tiny white flag, but it wasn’t enough to shoot B’Elanna’s self-esteem back up to where it had been that morning – after her eureka moment but before Jenny Delaney’s PADD had landed in her hot little hands.

 

She was standing in front of the bridge turbo lift, shoulders slumped, when she’d heard the strangest thing.  Strange, only because it hadn’t been uttered in three years.

 

“Little sister.”

 

B’Elanna turned around in surprise and was greeted by Chakotay, a curious Mona Lisa-smile painted above his dimpled chin.  He gestured to the PADD she’d given him.

 

“I’ll trade you _this_ for the report in your hand,” he pointed to the dead weight hanging from her right arm.

 

He flashed the front of the data device.  It was the one with the containment field schematics.

 

“It’s a great idea and I appreciate it,” he winked, “So don’t give up.”

 

They exchanged the PADDs and B’Elanna stepped into the lift.  She watched as Chakotay lingered in front of her for a moment – his eyes twinkling in quiet salute – before the doors closed her in. 

 

And as she walked the corridors of deck eleven to main engineering, his words echoed in her mind - giving her renewed courage with every step.

 

_Don’t give up._

 

She then realized – after being hit by yet another idea and turning back towards the turbo lift again, quickening her pace – that her ‘big brother’ hadn’t just referred to the data he’d perused. 

 

But it was a request he would never make openly.  It was just something she knew.  And if Chakotay loved the Captain, B’Elanna would do her best to do good by both of them.

 

“Computer, deck five.”

 

*    *    *

 

 _I never miss a thing_  
I’ve had measles and the mumps  
And when I play an ace  
My partner always trumps  
I guess I’m just a fool  
Who never looks before he jumps  
Everything happens to me

*    *    * __  
  
Kathryn was seven months pregnant and not once – in all her time with Starfleet – did she ever think she’d be in this predicament.

 

So far, the Tigaerans had thought her capable, strong and worthy of a trade agreement – but for the most superficial of reasons. 

 

They were a peculiar alien race – made up of exceptionally tall, feminine humanoids that were the equivalent to the Greek Amazons of Terran myth.  Unfortunately, the crew hadn’t made the best first impression.

 

Tom had been forced to land on the M Class planet and when a number of the crew – men mixed amongst women – disembarked, the Tigaerans responded with hostility.  They regarded the male species of any race as inferior and a threat to their own population.  But Voyager’s food supplies had dwindled down to a point of desperation and B’Elanna needed an arid spot to work on the warp coil assembly.  The aliens’ first taste of them had been the ship’s mouthy pilot and its psychedelically-attired, over-the-top mess hall cook.  Neither one’s sense of humor meshed well with the stone-faced females.

 

So it was pure luck when their leader – a white-haired, translucent-skinned and lavender-eyed beauty – stepped forward, placed an appendage on her own swollen belly and gestured to Kathryn.

 

 _“You are with child as well?”_ the universal translator conveyed in wonder _._

 

It was a fortunate coincidence that Amakat, the Tigaeran queen, had been expecting.  Encountering an alien species in the midst of reproducing was something rare and precious to them and they were intensely curious about it.  But they were adamant that the Voyager men stay sequestered on the ship.  Of course, this made Kathryn wonder as to how a queen could become pregnant if there were no male Tigaerans on the planet.

 

Despite resembling humans in every other way, the flowing white robes they wore hid quite an interesting bit of plumbing.  Tigaerans were hermaphrodites.  While Amakat took Kathryn on a short stroll through a dense forest, she explained their history.  More than a thousand years ago, Tigaere was inhabited by both male and female species.  But the men were warlike to the point of genocide.  Drastically changing the culture and gradually phasing out the men had evolved the species into one being – an individual with two sets of sexual organs in which the dominant phenotype was female.  It was quite a marvel – to say the least - that a species existed where the male genetic footprint was reduced to just their genitalia.

 

Normally, Amakat and her people would take one look at the male contingent and send Voyager on its way empty-handed.  So Kathryn made a concerted effort to please the queen for the sake of the crew’s welfare.  Within the course of one conversation, it was clear what she had to do.  Amakat was interested in human culture; she would trade food and medicines for this information.

 

It was only when she’d been asked who her mate was that Kathryn realized she had to lie.  She could tell from the alien queen’s derision of the men onboard that she abhorred the idea of any heterosexual relationship.  And if she wanted to appear the strong counterpart to this planet’s leader, she’d have to fudge the facts just a bit.

 

Instead of answering with the truth – that her first officer was her mate – Kathryn grabbed the first female she saw.

 

Lucky B’Elanna.

 

She’d felt bad for the engineer, but Kathryn knew the young woman could think well enough on her feet.  And the half-Klingon was more than aware of the stakes involved.

 

But that was all well and good.  The predicament that Kathryn was presently in paled in comparison.

 

*    *    *

 

Outside, a banquet was being held and everything was draped in winter white.  B’Elanna and the captain were the sole guests of honor, both women clad in matching Tigaeran attire.  At some point in the festivities, Kathryn’s bladder whined at her for relief and she was led in the direction of the queen’s private boudoir.  The lady-in-waiting told her that no one else would be allowed into the ‘bathroom.’

 

Considering the present situation, this was a mistake.

 

The toilet was an interesting contraption, to say the least.  Its many bells and whistles gave Kathryn a strange, alarming idea of what the Tigaeran anatomy must look like underneath those flowing robes.  But the seat (if that’s what it was) tipped to one side at an odd angle and soon, Kathryn found herself unceremoniously dumped onto the cold, marble-like floor.

 

She had been stuck between wall and toilet for the last ten minutes due to her large belly.  She’d pivoted, sucked in her stomach – yeah, right – but it was clear she would need someone else’s help to get out of this one.  And her bladder had elevated its whines to screams.

 

Oh, the indignity.

 

Kathryn had taken the combadge off her dress and was thumbing its smooth casing.

 

She tapped the device.

 

“Janeway to Torres,” she sighed heavily.

 

*    *    *

 

It was difficult to hide just how nervous she was.

 

B’Elanna longed to be back on her ship - helping the engineering team with the warp coils - only because it was the one environment she felt confident in.

 

Not that the Tigaerans weren’t friendly.  In fact, it seemed the queen’s consort was flirting with her.  Or maybe it was just the strange, purple ale she’d drunk that messed with her perception. 

 

Being in a mostly female setting was something B’Elanna avoided for the most part.  From the Klingon side of her family, she’d suffered through a contentious relationship with her mother, while on the human side, her father had been neglectful.  According to Miral, her daughter could never be Klingon enough; to John Torres however, B’Elanna was just a bit _too_ Klingon.  So it was inevitable that a young girl of mixed blood would turn out a tomboy, seeking male friendships and leadership to replace the father she wished she’d had and shutting out strong women that reminded her too much of her mother’s unrealistic expectations.

 

Naturally, it was a shock that Janeway had chosen her as the captain’s partner in this hare-brained scenario.  After enduring Paris’ pig-headed jibes (calling her ‘First Mate’ earned him a trip to sick bay) and an awkward briefing with Chakotay (going over Kathryn’s general likes and dislikes should she be grilled by the Tigaerans), B’Elanna resolved to take the surrealism of this particular mission in stride.

 

The goal was to charm these alien supermodels into handing over what would sustain Voyager’s crew for a good part of a year and so far, the ruse had worked like gangbusters.  B’Elanna took a risk in being extra solicitous with Kathryn; she’d observed how the Tigaerans paired up and gleaned her cues from them.  So far, the captain hadn’t disapproved. 

 

She just wished there was some way to break the ice that would relax the both of them.  The young engineering chief had more than an inkling of what the barriers between running a crew and personal life were like; for many years, she’d lived with the same walls herself.  Like everyone else on Voyager, B’Elanna wanted to be more than just a Starfleet employee.  If the crew were going to spend the rest of their lives together, they’d have to ease into something resembling friendship at least and family at most.  B’Elanna just didn’t know where that chink in the barrier was – or if Janeway wanted such an intrusion in the first place.

 

*Janeway to Torres*

 

It took B’Elanna a bit longer than usual – as she fingered through the numerous folds of fabric to find her combadge – to answer.

 

“Torres here.”

 

*Do you see the path that I took through the grove?*

 

“Yes, Captain.”

 

*I need you to figure out a polite way to excuse yourself without drawing too much attention and head down in that direction*

 

“On my way.”

 

*    *    *

 

Within minutes, Kathryn’s chief engineer had arrived, blessedly assessed the situation without much of a reaction and was now proceeding to ransack Amakat’s various toiletries for some oil-based lubricant.

 

“You’d think with their flawless skin, they’d have creams or lotions or something,” B’Elanna called out from the other room.

 

Kathryn rolled her eyes.

 

“They’re a little _too_ perfect, if you ask me.”

 

“A- _ha_!”  B’Elanna rushed back into the room with a porcelain-like jar.  She dipped in a finger and rubbed the transparent goo between thumb and forefinger, “This may do the trick.”

 

She then handed the opened vessel to Kathryn before turning around to leave once more.  B’Elanna’s head peeked in just as she was about to close the door.

 

“I’ll be outside if you need me, Captain,” she offered a smile.

 

Kathryn offered one in return.

 

“You’ve saved me, Lieutenant. Remind me to promote you when we get back.”

 

B’Elanna’s smile wavered just a little at the joke, but she nodded before shutting the door behind her. 

 

As she stood sentry - pacing back and forth - the young woman was slowly accepting what she couldn’t change and where she fit in the grand scheme of things.  The Captain would always be the captain; it was wrong to expect anything more informal.

 

Inside the bathroom, Kathryn had lifted the voluminous layers of fabric and was coating a good portion of her belly with generous amounts of goo.  She placed the pot down to one side and tried to push up with her glutes and hamstrings.  Her skin slipped along the barrier easily, and just as she was halfway in the clear, Kathryn felt a sharp twinge in her lower back.  The corresponding muscles on either side locked up in an overwhelming spasm.  She couldn’t move without pain.

 

Kathryn stopped, huffed to move a loose tendril from her flushed face, and decided enough was enough.  She needed to pee.  Peeing came before pride.

 

“B’Elanna!” she called out in resignation, “I’m afraid I’m going to need your assistance after all.”

 

*    *    *

 

She knew the captain was embarrassed enough and B’Elanna held back the nervousness she felt and focused instead on what she would want in the same situation.

 

A semblance of dignity.

 

The young woman helped her up and out of the crevasse she’d gotten stuck into and back onto the porcelain altar that served as an alien’s idea of individual waste disposal.  It was clear without asking that Kathryn’s injured back would not allow her to pee unassisted; B’Elanna had stood off to one side, cleared her throat quietly and looked upwards while trying to ignore the gushing sounds of urine that she had no business hearing.

 

She had no idea what to say.  If anything.

 

But the Captain?  She was full of surprises.  For one thing, she began to laugh.

 

“I know this sounds insane, but all I can think about is a certain Terran story my mother used to read to me as a child – about a bear – his name was ‘Sooh,’ ‘Fooh’? – oh, never mind.  He was stuck in a rabbit hole, trying to get at a honey pot.  And his best friend, a tiny piglet, had to help him.  And it was all because he’d eaten too much…”

 

B’Elanna closed her eyes and smiled.

 

“His name was ‘Pooh.’  I remember the story.  He ate too much honey and couldn’t get out of the rabbit hole.  I think all the animals – the rabbit, the piglet, an…ass…, an owl, a kangaroo?  Anyway, they starved him until the rabbit grew impatient and pushed Pooh out.  At least, that’s what I recall.”

 

B’Elanna could hear the woman behind her getting situated. Kathryn chuckled.

 

“Sadistic story.  Believe me, if it were as simple as slimming down to avoid an away-mission travesty, I’d do it –“

 

“There’s nothing more important than what you’re doing, Captain.”

 

It had come out of her mouth before she’d had a chance to give it to the censors in her mind.

 

“Lieutenant?”

 

B’Elanna froze.  She was ready for the reprimand.

 

“I need a little help getting up?”

 

She turned to find Kathryn looking at her with an amused expression.

 

“Of course!  I’m sorry, Captain.”

 

B’Elanna pulled the older woman to standing and watched as Kathryn walked to the basin and washed her hands.

 

“Thank you for the kind words, Miss Torres,” she could barely be heard over the trickling of water, “And you should call me ‘Kathryn’ when we’re like this.”

 

Janeway turned and wiped her hands on the adjoining towel.  Afterwards, she put a hand on her engineering chief’s shoulder and squeezed.  The lopsided smirk appeared.

 

“After what you’ve experienced today, I think you’ve earned it.”

 

*    *    *

 

The ‘couple’ returned to the banquet, but Amakat and her consort looked at them strangely the moment they’d arrived.  In fact, every Tigaeran seemed extra solicitous henceforth.  Both Kathryn and B’Elanna took the rest of the evening in stride, ignoring the peculiar looks from the queen’s ladies in waiting.

 

By the time dessert had long been finished, the captain finally got an inkling of what had changed the atmosphere.

 

Kathryn was sipping the Tigaeran equivalent of coffee when Amakat leaned over and whispered into her ear:

 

“I’m impressed.”

 

“Hmm?” she was still marveling over the heavenly suspension she was drinking.  The aroma was heady – better than her usual Arabica.  She made a mental note of requesting the root for the airponics bay.

 

The queen put her arm around Kathryn, making her flinch ever so slightly.

 

“The stamina, the drive.  Even as you are with child.” 

 

Perhaps the universal translator was malfunctioning.

 

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Your Majesty.”

 

“I smell the fragrance of our sexual lubricant.  You found it amongst my ablutions, did you not?”

 

“Yes, but –“  _Oh, good lord, this culture._

“We Tigaerans have a keen sense of smell and that particular emollient is an aphrodisiac.  You and your mate are reeking of its scent.  There is nothing to be ashamed of, Captain Janeway.”

 

From the placid look on the alien’s face, Kathryn knew not to argue.  If the Queen believed that she and her Chief of Engineering had gone off for a quickie tryst and it helped the trade agreement stand on solid ground, then so be it.

 

Kathryn was about to reply when she felt an arm go around her from the opposite side.  She turned to find B’Elanna gazing upon her lovingly, but with an air of mischief.

 

“How are you doing, honey?” she husked.

 

In that moment, the Captain knew the half-Klingon had heard everything.  Kathryn also knew that the poor younger woman was blitzed on Tigaeran ale.

 

“Not as good as you’re doing, _dear_ ,” she admonished and turned to Amakat, “I thank you for your hospitality –“

 

“Say no more, Captain,” the Queen purred, “Everything you ask for will be fulfilled by morning.  Thank you for gracing us with your presence.”

 

Kathryn barely had time to revel in how well the night had gone when she felt B’Elanna’s head fall on her shoulder.

 

The poor woman had psyched herself out, drank too much and was now snoring loudly in her ear.  Amakat looked over at the duo and merely smiled.

 

It had been a good First Contact.

 

*    *    *

 

 _I’ve telegraphed and phoned_  
And sent air mail special, too  
Your answer was goodbye  
And there was even postage due  
I fell in love just once  
And then it had to be with you  
Everything happens to me

*    *    *

 

It had been a poor First Contact.

 

It wasn’t about the Tak Tak.  No, Neelix had come through on that affair.  Kathryn was presently thinking about the macrovirus that had infested the ship.  Her Ship.  She was the last hope for Voyager.  And she was eight months pregnant and jutting out to God Knows Where.

 

The last time she’d seen her toes was the previous birthday.  And her vagina?   ‘Saints preserve us,’ as her mother Gretchen would say.  As Kathryn slinked behind a barrier closest to the mess hall, she allowed herself a moment to think of home, of Phoebe – what her family would be doing at that very moment, a day or so before Thanksgiving –

 

A beehive alien creature materialized from beyond the hatch and tried to attack her.  Kathryn aimed her phaser and effectively vaporized the offending beast with the press of a thumb.  She made her way into the mess hall and closed the door behind her.

 

The air hummed with an insectile buzzing and Kathryn knew she had only a few moments to assess the situation before moving on.  Her keen eyes honed in on Chakotay – slumped over a table, his neck an open wound from which more ‘flies’ lit.

 

The outcome looked grim.  The months of gestation had worn Kathryn to her core; it took every bit of adrenaline to keep her alert and ready for any attack under the harsh circumstances.  She was looking for something – anything – to give her an upper hand against this species of alien.  Kathryn would sooner annihilate herself than live with the knowledge that a pod virus had wiped out her entire crew.

 

From the corner of her eye, she spied B’Elanna slumped over a corner table and made her way over to the unconscious lieutenant.  The woman’s entire form was slack except for her hand, whose fingers where tightly clamped around a metal device attached to a belt of some kind.  Kathryn’s scientific instinct took hold of her in that moment and she dislodged the trinket from her engineering chief’s grip.

 

Her eye then caught the PADD below B’Elanna’s hand.  It was still on.

 

Kathryn’s face lit up as she read the contents.  It didn’t take much to put two and two together.  After all, both women were tech experts to the core.  The Captain clasped the young woman’s shoulder and sat her back gently in her chair – hoping that the change of posture would re-circulate the pooled blood in her extremities.

 

“Thank you, B’Elanna,” she whispered, before leaving the mess hall – compression rifle at the ready and the device strapped around her diaphragm.

 

*    *    *

 

It was the best baby shower present a captain could ever want and Kathryn had every intention of using it.

 

So far, she hadn’t time to test it out; she could only trust that B’Elanna’s schematics were accurate and true.  The captain had managed to persuade the Tak Tak into putting off their mission to eradicate her crew and the virus in one fell swoop long enough for the Doctor to build an antigen bomb.  Kathryn had since utilized one of Neelix’s luau programs to lure the macroviruses into a controllable environment.

 

She’d rounded the corner on deck five and was on her way to holodeck three when one of the older, bigger aliens confronted her.  Soon, she was pinned down to the carpet, a cone-shaped appendage thrusting down upon her.  After missing the first three initial jabs, Kathryn tired and didn’t swerve in time to miss a potentially fatal blow.  But it gave B’Elanna’s device an opportunity to make up for that miscalculation.

 

The sharpened beak clashed against an invisible force field that surrounded the captain’s abdomen.  The device Kathryn wore above her diaphragm had activated in that moment and served to protect her belly.  As she caught her breath and rallied what was left of her stamina, the creature grew restless – unable to penetrate the dozen or so centimeters of dead space encompassing its victim’s abdomen.

 

It gave her the time she needed to draw her dagger and pierce the gruesome being in its vital organs. 

 

Once the path was cleared of alien obstacles, Kathryn was able to open the holodeck doors, activate the bomb and throw it inside.

 

*    *    *

 

The mess hall was no longer filled with an eerie silence punctuated by inhuman buzzing.

 

The room now served as an impromptu healing center for those recovering from the macroviral infestation, the airborne antigen having done its duty.

 

Megan Delaney had been rubbing the space between her ribs and fingering the raw, pink flesh that signified that her neck wound was healing rapidly when she’d heard a groan from the cot next to her.

 

Jenny sat up; her twin could tell she was eyeing the Captain as the woman tirelessly went from bed to bed, taking stock of her crew despite the fact that she was due to deliver any day now.  Megan watched in awe as Kathryn stopped before a prone B’Elanna, took a long moment to say something that appeared heartfelt and uncharacteristically hugged the half-Klingon in front of everyone.  The captain’s belly came between the two and B’Elanna held back, causing Kathryn to laugh in response -

 

“God, she’s huge!” Jenny hissed.

 

The smile that had formed on Megan’s face quickly turned upside down and she glared at her ungrateful twin.

 

“Shut up, Jenny,” she snapped.

 

Megan left her sister in her wake as she strode to Janeway’s side.  And not a moment too soon.  The captain had been crouching down and needed a hand in order to rise off her haunches.

 

“Thank you, Megan,” Kathryn got up and smiled.

 

“No, Captain.  Thank _you_.”


	3. You're Driving Me Crazy

*

 

_How true_

_Were the friends who were near me to cheer me_

_Believe me, they knew_

_But you_

_Were the kind who would hurt me, desert me_

_When I needed you_

_Yes you, you’re driving me crazy!_

_What did I do to you?_

*    *    *

 

In the blessed respite between blocks of excruciating pain, Kathryn blamed herself.

 

*    *    *

 

A scan of Thaytea had shown a wealth of dilithium ore only twenty meters below the planet’s surface.  Voyager’s power supply had been dwindling; they needed the mining rights but the protocols to approve a trade agreement had to be strictly adhered to.

 

Under normal circumstances, everything would have proceeded without a hitch.  Thaytens were as xenophobic as Tigaerans - but from a technological perspective as opposed to a gender one.  They both had an abundance of natural resources, yet the Thaytens chose to live a primitive existence according to their religious practices.

 

The crew had dealt with aliens who balked at the use of transporters and always kept at least two shuttles at the ready.  Kathryn would have happily sent Chakotay or Tuvok in place of herself; she was already a week past her due date.  But Zenu, the Thayten emperor, would only negotiate with the leader of her vessel.  Upon entering their airspace, she’d already made it apparent who was in charge of what.

 

So Kathryn had no choice but to go on the mission along with Chakotay and B’Elanna.  In hindsight, she would’ve brought the Doctor as well, but the captain assumed that once she’d gone into labor, she could have easily postponed the meeting and reboarded the shuttle for Voyager.

 

But this was before the prime minister had informed them of the seasonal plasma storms that rocked the planet for three straight moons out of the year.  Within a few hours of landing, the atmosphere became a firestorm of activity, making it impossible for shuttle and transporter technology to reach the planet’s surface.

 

Still, Kathryn had few qualms about giving birth in an unfamiliar setting.  She’d prepared for this moment like a skilled tactician who regularly examined every worst-case scenario with a perfectionist’s eye.  Terran women had been doing this since time immemorial; as captain of Voyager, Kathryn was sure she’d be in much more harrowing situations than the mere natural act of bringing a child into the world.

 

It was the alien custom she had to abide by that made this particular away mission almost impossible to achieve.  The Thaytens didn’t believe in anything but ‘natural’ childbirth.  Furthermore, their religion dictated that every female undergo a ‘silent birth’ – a ritual of meditation and focused breathing that precluded the cries of pain that marked any human experience.

 

When the Thayten emperor learned that Kathryn had gone into labor during their banquet, he offered her the highest honor one could give a female of their species – to give birth in a holy crystalline temple made of…dilithium.  The aliens worshipped the mineral as though it were a jewel.  The structure’s refractive capabilities gave the otherwise dreary planet - a planet steeped in more darkness throughout their calendar year than light – a bright environment in which to live, love and work.  To be surrounded by such benevolence was to shower good fortune on the mother and child.

 

And because Thaytens did not experience birth as something marked by intense pain, they stood fast to the dignity of a silent passage.  Every female of high station was given an opportunity to enter the fragile structure.  If the birthing was peaceful and no cracks appeared in the walls and eaves, the matron’s family was given an abundance of the mineral to keep them in light for a good part of the year.

 

Of course, Kathryn – in her duty and supreme confidence – took on this challenge.  Voyager didn’t have much of a choice.  It was clear from prior negotiation with Zenu that the Thaytens frowned upon giving dilithium to those who would tamper with the structural integrity of the mineral.  And their engineers were smart enough to know that B’Elanna and Voyager’s science team would do just that in order to make it conform to her retrofitted engines.  No, the only way the captain would be able to obtain the mineral was if she proved herself as highly deserving of it with a ‘silent birth.’

 

Chakotay – more concerned with his wife than whether or not Voyager could obtain mining rights – argued heatedly with Kathryn about the risks involved.  While her contractions were thirty or so minutes apart, she felt confident and was adamant that they adopt the custom. 

 

But the commander had studied the rituals expected of the birthing mothers-to-be.  Each female was only allowed access to a plant-derived anesthesia and the use of any technology to monitor the process was strictly forbidden.  The latter issue was unacceptable to Chakotay and he managed to persuade the aliens into allowing Kathryn the use of a biofunction monitor, scanner and tricorder that was part of the shuttle’s equipment.  Although Zenu was an ardent practitioner of his religion, he also realized that endangering the life of a visiting guest and the guest’s impending offspring would go against that very religion.

 

Once the modified conditions for the ritual had been agreed upon, B’Elanna piloted the shuttle with Kathryn and Chakotay to a remote region of Thaytea. The commander led his robed captain into the innermost chamber of the crystal temple.  She lay down on a mattress stuffed with fine thistle and down that smelled sweetly of a lavender-like flower.  No sooner had they entered the eerily quiet and extremely bright realm, did Kathryn’s contractions intensify, the spaces between them closing in exponentially.

 

Chakotay couldn’t tell from the constant monitoring whether or not the mineral surrounding them sped up the process.  All he could do was keep Kathryn calm, keep her breathing regulated, and prepare to deliver their son or daughter when the time came.  His experience in the Maquis as a field medic was all he could rely upon in that moment.  It was a less than ideal one – a situation borne from both necessity and Kathryn’s stubborn need to prove herself again.

 

*    *    *

 

She wanted to bash the monitor into the crystal wall and shatter it into a million pieces.  Every time her lower extremities clenched into a tight mass of muscle – her nerves crying out for relief – the line on the view screen spiked and remained at its highest level for what seemed like forever.

 

Kathryn was starting to believe that the equipment was alive, and that it was mocking her position, the decision she’d made.

 

And she wasn’t allowed to scream.  She could barely whimper above a whisper.  And in all its bitter irony, it was _unnatural_.  Inhuman and inhumane.  With every burning cramp, Kathryn pictured the face of her oppressor, Emperor Zenu, and vowed that if she ever got out of this scrape, mined the dilithium and returned to Voyager, she would nuke the entire baby’s birthplace from orbit.

 

Her feet were clammy and shaking; Chakotay’s attempts to warm them against his chest as she brought her legs up weren’t working.  As the pain dissipated, she sipped the air in shuddering breaths.

 

“How long, Chakotay?” she hissed

 

He looked worried, but she was beyond caring.

 

“Love, it lasted as long as the last time –”

 

“How.  Long,” she breathed, sweat trickling down her temples.  Her armpits were hot and damp.

 

The commander applied the cold compress to her head.

 

“A minute.  Sixty five seconds to be precise.”

 

“That’s all?” her eyes went wide, as if accusing him of lying, “How far apart?”

 

She saw him visibly gulp.  It had been the same routine for the last two hours.

 

“Two minutes.”

 

Kathryn again fought the urge to scream  – this time in frustration instead of pain – but the shimmering vibrations emanating from the crystal walls every time either one of them spoke reminded her of where she was and what was at stake.

 

“And how dilated am I?”

 

He didn’t have to look at the monitor and she knew his answer before it escaped his lips.

 

“One centimeter.”

 

“But it’s been like that for the last hour!” she whispered harshly.  More than a touch of desperation was creeping into her voice.

 

He stood up and got on the mattress, spooning her from behind and trying to push back the matted, drenched hair that was plastered to her cheeks.

 

“In a minute, you can have another dose of the Candorian root.”

 

“I don’t feel any relief.  It’s not working, Chakotay!” her voice was rising and she clamped a hand over her mouth, biting down on her tongue and tasting blood.

 

“Then scream, Kathryn.  I’ve wanted you to do that since the moment we started this – “

 

“I’m not giving up, Commander.”

 

The use of his rank bristled.  She could tell by the silence that followed.

 

And then the wave of pain returned.  Instead of building and building like it did before, the arc was much steeper.  The cruelty, the immediacy of its return took her breath away. 

 

Literally.

 

*    *    *

 

Chakotay felt her holding it in and abruptly sat them both up, grasping her legs as he forced her against his lap and leant her into his chest.

 

“Kathryn, breathe, dammit,” he hissed, taking both hands and letting her sink her nails into the soft flesh of his palms.  He closed his eyes, ignored the pain she was transferring to him and began a count.

 

She elbowed him back as she began to huff.

 

He knew that if he stopped counting, she’d lose focus and panic.  He’d seen it in the last hour and her face had almost turned from red to purple.  It was not something he wanted to see again.

 

The biofunction monitor beeped at a low volume, but Chakotay knew what it meant.  It was a sound he dreaded.  It meant the baby wasn’t getting enough oxygen.

 

“Captain, breathe!” he whispered into her ear as though it had been an order administered on the bridge.  It took them both out of the moment for just a microsecond.

 

Kathryn whipped her head around, panting forcefully and meeting his eyes with a reproach he’d never seen before.  She sucked wind in one long breath and forced it out like a gale.  With every pull of her lungs, Chakotay felt her entire body shake and contract, shrinking into a ball of vibrating wires.  He wrapped himself around her tighter.

 

“Stop that!” she hissed, “It hurts.  Can’t you feel that?  And there’s nothing…you… oh God…can…do…”

 

He offered her his hands like small animals she could kill if she wanted to.  She mashed them, stabbed them with her fingernails. But he was numb to the pain on the outside.  Chakotay’s pain radiated from within - the despair of being ineffective, useless, unable to comfort or take the anguish from someone he loved and absorb it himself.

 

He felt her breathing regulate and her body slacken.  The contraction was over and the beeping monitor ceased its incessant warning.  Chakotay grasped the compress flung to one side and dipped it in the basin of water next to them.  He applied it to her sweaty brow and wiped away the moisture, hoping the cool air that caressed her forehead would offer some measure of relief.

 

Kathryn lay back against his chest once more and this time – to his own growing panic – she began to sob softly.  He could tell she wanted to offer up more, to fully express the cauldron of feelings that were cruelly being balled up, and it made his heart fill with rage.

 

He did a mental count of his own before tapping his combadge.

 

“Chakotay to Torres.”

 

*    *    *

 

She’d stopped pacing about two hours ago.

 

Growing frustrated with the uselessness she felt, B’Elanna had decided to do what she did best.

 

Tinker.

 

After forty minutes of volleying comm calls between herself and Joe Carey about the transporters, the engineering chief finally decided to stop micromanaging her colleague and leave him alone.  The remaining hour and a half was spent boosting the shuttle’s shield grid while it sat to the lee side of a cave. 

 

If the plasma storms weren’t about to let up, B’Elanna deduced that the best way to get the Captain and Chakotay out of any potentially life-threatening situation was to strengthen the hull and life support systems.  As she hunched over the open side panel, rerouting and recalibrating, the young woman glanced every so often at the violent effects of the storm, the streaks of energy that filled the sky at unpredictable bursts.  For the first time, she admitted she needed Tom Paris.  Not because she was a masochist for his playful pig-headed flyboy nature, but because she wished for his piloting skills.

 

From the nag-filled conversation she’d had with Joe, B’Elanna could tell that the entire crew felt as she did.  They were frustrated and anxious – a natural reaction to being separated from the command team by a freak of nature.  By this time, a majority of the crew had firmly established in their collective mind how the birth of Voyager’s second child would go and none of them had anticipated something so risky.

 

B’Elanna had an inkling of what Kathryn was doing and why.  She was not just another expectant mother; she was captain of the only Starfleet vessel they knew of stranded in the Delta Quadrant.  And if it had been her, the half-Klingon probably would have come to the same decision.  B’Elanna had always thought of herself as tougher and stronger than she really was and often, she’d prove to the entire crew that she was correct – sometimes within an inch of her life.  But this was uncharted territory.  And the young woman worried for her friend.

 

She dropped the hypo spanner after the recalibration failed to work for the fifth time.  Her impatience had given her an acid burn as one of the fuel loops split.

 

“Ow!” she quickly sealed the line and used the dermal regenerator on the wound.

 

 _Kahless_ , _what can I do?_

*Chakotay to Torres*

 

She slapped her communicator and got up quickly, hitting her head on the panel door.  B’Elanna was about to cry out, but quickly remembered the conditions the command team were working under and clamped a hand over her mouth.

 

She removed it and whispered, “Torres here, Commander.”

 

The hatch slid open and she returned to the shuttle cockpit to strengthen the signal; the temple was ten meters below the surface.

 

*B’Elanna, what’s the status on the transporters?*

 

“Still unable to get them online.  Carey’s doing a few tests, but so far we can’t beam anyone down and we can’t get anyone off planet either.”

 

*Chakotay –*  It was the Captain’s voice in a warning tone,  *We’re not giving up -*

 

*B’Elanna, I need you to find out whether or not we can transport something inorganic from Voyager to the temple*

 

Amidst his orders, the young woman could hear scuffling and then heavy breathing.

 

*B’Elanna, do you copy?*

 

“Y-yes, yes, Commander.  Acknowledged.”

 

*Chakotay out*

 

He cut the link and B’Elanna slumped back into her chair.  She’d never heard Kathryn so weak before.  And the man she considered an older brother had an edge to his voice – an edge she hadn’t heard since their time with the Maquis.

 

Without a moment lost, the engineering chief connected to transporter room five where she knew Joe would be.

 

*    *    *

 

Chakotay had managed to get Kathryn up on her feet, and they were doing slow, measured paces back and forth in the chamber.  She was weakening and it hurt him to torture her in such a way, but the baby’s heartbeat was too erratic, the oxygen flow from mother’s lungs to fetus irregular.

 

“Do you mind filling me in on what you’re doing, Chakotay?” she’d managed after the last contraction passed.

 

“I’m trying to see if we can get a hypospray – “

 

“ _No._ They’ll do a simple test, find out and we’ll lose the trade agreement.”

 

“I’m pulling rank, Kathryn. You’re in no shape to make decisions –”

 

“Better than having a conflict of interest!” she spat between clenched teeth, “The baby will be fine and so will I.  Both of us know that Voyager needs…”

 

“Voyager needs its captain!  We will find another planet, another…less misogynistic species of alien…”

 

“What universe do you live in, Commander?  Even Tuvok would agree that my sacrifice –”

 

“-is not worth all the dilithium in the galaxy!”

 

Her eyes filled.  Perhaps it was from knowing that the next contraction was due or maybe she’d finally relent –

 

“It’s _too late_ , Chakotay.  I’m in this to see it through.”

 

“To see _what_ through, Kathryn?  The birth of our baby or risking everything for fuel?  How could you even measure…?  No.”

 

“You don’t believe I can do this.” 

 

“No. You can’t.”

 

The hurt look on her face weighed down on him.

 

*Torres to Chakotay*

 

He slapped his badge just as Kathryn went into another contraction.  She hunched over, gripping his arms.  He planted his feet to give her balance.

 

“Chakotay here.  Kathryn, you can’t lie down,” he propped her up as she almost slid to the floor.  He was rewarded with her digging into his shoulders and winced.

 

*Commander, we’ve managed to get an empty canister from the ship to the coordinates that match the entrance to the chamber*

 

Chakotay looked off to the right and sure enough, the tiny cylindrical object had materialized.  He sighed.  There was an end to this at last.

 

“Good work.  B’Elanna, I need you to get the Doctor to beam down an anesthetic –”

 

“Lieutenant, belay that order!” Kathryn had hissed out as she struggled, her legs shaking.

 

*Captain?*

 

There was a slight panic to B’Elanna’s voice that focused Chakotay in a way that he hadn’t felt in a long time.

 

“Little sister, we’re doing this the Maquis way,” he intoned, his soft voice sounding intense and threatening over the line, “You will follow my orders.”

 

Kathryn wanted to scream again, but she was deep into the highest peak of her pain and it stabbed into her vocal chords as well as her gut.  All that came forth was a strangled cry of betrayal. 

 

It was mutiny.

 

After a long pause, Chakotay could hear the channel open again.

 

*Yes, sir*

 

*    *    *

 

_The Maquis way._

 

She knew what that meant, but it had been a long time since she’d shed the regulations, the protocol, all the stifling red tape.

 

B’Elanna wanted more than anything to just do as she was told.  It was a no brainer.  She could tell from the open link that Kathryn’s pain was too much for her to bear.  She could tell that Chakotay was afraid for the baby; considering his knowledge and fortitude, this was rare.  And that alone made the chief engineer afraid.

 

But the ‘Maquis way’ had something else wrapped up in its spontaneity, its ‘fuck you’ to the establishment.  It was steeped in that sentiment, yes, but it was also defined by a philosophy of fulfilling contradicting needs.  The rebel mentality was about thinking outside the box in a way that everyone could win.

 

B’Elanna hunched over and stared at her blackened, dirtied hands and thought about what both parties needed.  She simplified everything, yet still, she was stumped.  Until she realized that there was a third party to consider.

 

Firing up the view screen, she entered the comm link frequency of the Thayten clinic closest to the cave.  Within seconds, the kind face of what B’Elanna assumed was the alien equivalent of a doctor or nurse came online.

 

“Skydweller!  What may I do for you?  Is Captain Janeway faring well?  Has the young one arrived?”

 

She fought the urge to verbally lay into the alien and took a deep breath.

 

“Not yet.  But we’ve run out of Candorian root.  Will you have several vials ready for me if I start out from these coordinates?”

 

“Certainly, Skydweller.”

 

B’Elanna warmed up the engines and cut the link.   She opened a new one – this time, to Voyager’s sick bay.

 

“Doctor, stand by.  I’m going to need every cognitive subroutine and database you have up and running in the next ten minutes.”

 

*Acknowledged*

 

*    *    *

 

Individual contractions were now impossible to track.

 

They were coming in – one on top of the other.  There was no respite.  No chance to protest, to argue, to weep, to bargain, to cajole, or to ask for mercy.  Nature had taken its course and Kathryn was now doubled-over in a fetal position on the cold floor, Chakotay struggling to lift her into his arms.

 

When he’d finally gotten her there, the biofunction monitor began its incessant beep, but this time, the beats were coming in at a faster rate.  Kathryn was hyperventilating with the pain, her short breaths too shallow to admit the necessary oxygen into her lungs to keep the baby alive.  She was pale, a bluish tinge highlighting her cheekbones and covering her cracked lips.

 

He smacked his combadge and almost roared into the line when –

 

*Older brother.  Stand by for transport*

 

The hypospray materialized beside him.  He grabbed it and administered the medication along the lower lumbar area of her spine.

 

Within seconds, Chakotay felt the tension leave her body.  The curled fists, the jagged breaths, the clenched limbs – they all relaxed.  The beeping slowed down to silence.  He panicked again when he realized Kathryn had passed out.  Chakotay checked her vitals and that of the baby’s in quick succession.  She was breathing normally.  Their child’s readings were stable.

 

He eyed his chronometer.  She had been in labor for seven hours. And she was only five centimeters dilated.

 

Despite all of his wife’s efforts, it was her body and not her mind that had betrayed her.  Chakotay wanted to weep - for all their burdens, for the conflict between duty and family.  The worst was over.  He would wake her when she was fully dilated and it was time to push; Kathryn needed this sleep.  Still, he hated himself for the detached side he’d shown in order to save her life and the baby’s.

 

*Big brother?*

 

He’d wrapped the blanket over Kathryn’s sleeping form and was now lying back onto the cold floor, staring at her face – finally peaceful in its unconscious state – before tapping his communicator to respond.

 

“Thank you, B’Elanna.  I realize how difficult that must have been for you, but I want you to know that you did the right thing -”

 

*I know.  Is she asleep?*

 

“Yes,” he rubbed his eyes wearily.

 

*Well, if she’s mad at you when she wakes up, you can tell her that you just injected her with a concentrated mixture of Candorian root and tuberone – another natural anesthetic that’s untraceable in the bloodstream.  The Doctor assures me that the Thaytens won’t be able to detect anything in her but their native plant*

 

He stopped rubbing and craned his head, watching her breathe and reveling in the simplicity of it.  His eyes filled and the cheek on the cold floor was now slippery with tears.

 

“So the trade agreement –”

 

*Is safe.  That’s the Maquis Way, isn’t it?  For old time’s sake?*

 

“Thank you, little sister,” he waited for a quip in reply, but could only hear sniffling.  Then –

 

*Chakotay?  What are you going to name him or her?  At least let me be the first to know*

 

“After Kathryn finds out what you’ve done, she’ll want to name her after you – “

 

*But if it’s a boy*

 

“What do you suggest?”

 

*Demothi*

 

There was a long silence between them.  And when her voice returned on the line, B’Elanna sounded less sure of herself.

 

*I mean, it’s not the best name, but -*

 

“It’s perfect, B’E.”

 

*Get some rest, big brother.  You did good.  Torres out*

 

*    *    *

 

The world was more than off-center; it had been spun off of its axis.

 

She woke to the view screen on her right, Chakotay’s sleeping form spooning her from behind.  Kathryn was fascinated by the spike from the contractions - fascinated because the area below her diaphragm felt the corresponding pressure, but not the pain.  And the serenity she felt?  God, it was euphoric.  After the hours she’d experienced, she thought she’d died and had been born into another reality, another universe.

 

And the guilt it brought.

 

She’d failed.

 

But not with regards to her crew.  Chakotay had explained what B’Elanna and the Doctor had done.  In a daze – from the lack of pain or the medication, it was difficult to discern – Kathryn didn’t know anymore how to react.  All she knew was that she’d been very, very wrong.  She’d miscalculated her limitations, her strengths, her weaknesses.

 

She was not capable anymore.   She was beholden to an unpredictable force.

 

A force of life that wanted to be born.

 

It was time.  She was ten centimeters dilated and the medicinal concoction was wearing off.  The pain was spiraling in like Mother’s Nature version of clockwork.

 

The mattress was now up against a crystalline wall, the back of her head relishing the coldness of its surface.  He forced her to lie down, her knees hiked up to the level of her chin and Kathryn panicked for a moment, realizing that this was not the way it was supposed to be – that the Doctor, not her husband, was supposed to be at the level of her vagina.  She panicked because he was not supposed to see her in this context – the lack of power, the animal way in which she was to add to her identity.  At best, Chakotay would be forced to see her as more than captain or woman.  At worst, he would have to see her as Madonna, the ultimate caregiver to his child, an embodiment of himself mixed with her that she could never hope to live up to.

 

And it was all baptized in blood, excrement, sweat and tears - all the messiness of coming into the world instead of just…coming.  Kathryn didn’t want him to see this, didn’t want him to see her this way.  It was a sacrilege to the oasis of perfection she wanted to personify until the day they died; instead he would see that she was unnecessarily complicated, incomplete without him and without the child that they would share together.  Chakotay would realize that she was no longer just herself – the captain of a starship – she would be his liability, a weight, a woman ruled by her irrational love for someone that would represent far more than any principles she held dear.  And it would make no sense.  Because it was all based on a force she had no control over – a force that ruled her mind, heart, body and spirit for nine full months.

 

And after she saw his face – because she knew she was having a boy – his capture of her heart would be complete.

 

But that didn’t matter in this moment.   The searing, burning sensation she felt as Chakotay told her his head was crowning was all that she could concentrate on.  Kathryn was grateful that her husband knew what to do, that he was calm enough in the first place.  For every turn in which she bore down and pushed, he told her the baby had moved several centimeters.  But for every moment in which the pain seized her, the boy moved back into the womb, mirroring her ambivalence at being reborn into this world as a mother.

 

Still, the exercises she’d done had paid off in the end.  The actual birthing took only fifty minutes and at the last second, she’d felt a pain that screamed at her to push – even as Chakotay urged her not to – and she waited, trusting him in a way that she’d never trusted anyone before.

 

“Now, Kathryn.  Push and the baby’s here.”

 

And she did and heard him cry.

 

He was real.

 

“Oh, my love.  He’s a beautiful boy.  Our boy.”

 

Chakotay wiped his tiny, shivering, reddish form with a washcloth, swaddled him tightly in the Thayten infant blanket marked for the occasion, and placed him firmly into his mother’s anxious arms.

 

He was a mix of sprite and old man.  As all human babies are.  His eyes were light, but they could darken a week, a month hence.  His head was overgrown in weeds of black hair.  And he wasn’t afraid to scream.

 

The dilithium walls began to shake and Kathryn heard a panel break, but it was long out of her hands.

 

Demothi was human and he would not be denied.

 

And with that, she collapsed in sleep, holding onto her son as Chakotay looked on with sadness, opening the comm link that would tell B’Elanna that it was over.

 

*    *    *

 

_That’s the time you must keep on trying  
Smile_

_What’s the use of crying?_  
You’ll find that life is still worthwhile  
If you just smile

*    *    *

 

“The baby won’t starve, Mr. Neelix!  It’s perfectly normal for an infant to lose weight in the first week out of the womb!”

 

“But while we wait for the Captain’s milk to come in, Doctor, let’s just replicate a bottle of formula – “

 

“No, no, no, no.  That will introduce nipple confusion…”

 

While cradling a crying Demothi in her arms, Kathryn let the scene before her unfold as though she were underwater.  The first few days of sleep deprivation were taking their toll and she couldn’t think straight.  Something about this picture, having these two crewmembers in the nursery discussing her _breasts_ this way seemed…not right.  But she hadn’t the strength to speak up.

 

It was as though stepping over the threshold into the baby’s room sucked out her personality, her ability to be assertive, commanding.  The Captain.  Where _was_ she?

 

As if on cue, Neelix looked over at her warmly while grinding his sharp teeth, “Captain?”

 

She couldn’t make the simplest of decisions - as though choosing between an artificial nipple vs. a real one was ever simple.  To one, it was no big deal; to the other, it represented a slippery slope.  Kathryn could see that they both meant well. The Doctor was someone she trusted implicitly because of his scientific expertise.  But Neelix softened the hologram’s textbook-like edges with his own homespun technique, his innate ability to change Demothi’s diapers at lightning pace, the way he swaddled him so skillfully that the little rascal couldn’t worm his arm or leg out –

 

“Captain?” the Doctor countered the Talaxian before noticing the little boy’s cries had now elevated to wails.  Without asking, he took Demothi from Kathryn’s arms and brought him over one shoulder.

 

She winced.  Her son was so tiny, so fragile.  How could anyone handle him so roughly –

 

Suddenly, a burp loud enough to belong to a full-grown Targ emanated from the boy’s tiny mouth.  Kathryn could see him sigh, shudder and slacken against the Doctor’s shoulder.  Within a minute, her son was asleep.

 

“Gas,” the Doctor whispered and winked, “It’s a human infant’s worst enemy.”

 

She envied the smile on the EMH’s face.  He wasn’t much more than light and motion, yet he could do for Demothi something that didn’t come easily or sometimes, at all, for Kathryn.

 

But she had no time to process anything.  The Doctor gave the little bundle back to her, so that she could enjoy the quiet way in which he settled like a leaden lump in the crook of her elbow.  It was the calm before the storm she craved most, before his stomach would empty again and he’d want to feed.

 

It had been four days and still, all Kathryn expressed was the obligatory colostrum.  The Doctor had assured her that it was high in immunoglobulin and that it would be enough for the child until her milk came in, but still, she had the sneaking suspicion that something was wrong.  It was past the average seventy-two hour mark and…nothing.  She could tell because Demothi would swat her breast away and cry within ten or so minutes of latching on.  He wanted more and what mommy had wasn’t enough.

 

Kathryn had tried every position, every hold.  Neither one of them could get comfortable.  She would only release her breath at the moment of contact – when she felt it was right - but her body would remain tense, unable to relax.  But just as she’d gotten the hang of it, he would break contact and begin to whimper.  And so the process of trying and latching and releasing would start all over again.  Kathryn’s skin grew raw with the repetition.  It was painful – both in the physical and the mental sense.

 

Still, no one knew her anguish.  If Kathryn had been on Earth – at home in Indiana with Gretchen – she could ask for help, for guidance.  There’d be no modesty needed around her own mother and she would’ve been able to relax and let someone close to her - someone who had raised her - take the reins of this new, unfamiliar part of life.  Chakotay was the only person who had been present while she breastfed.  Still, for as much as he intuited from growing up on Trebus, there wasn’t much a man – by his very nature - could do to help.  And he was just as new to this as she was.  Regardless, nothing could substitute her own mother’s touch or first-hand experience.

 

And she was ashamed that the same phrase came to mind – sometimes in succession, sometimes popping up out of nowhere –

 

_I want my mother._

 

She had to hide everything she felt, however.  Kathryn was not someone who cried easily.  But after her son had been born, everything burst forth.  It was as though Demothi’s former residence inside her was the dam that held every messy emotion at bay.  During the witching hour, she often wished – horrified to have even let the thought enter her mind – that she could shove him back in.

 

It wasn’t that she didn’t love Demothi.  God, she couldn’t help but love him.  He was all she thought about.  Kathryn just didn’t know what to do.  Wasn’t motherhood the most natural, instinctual thing that happened to a woman?  All of those platitudes – how once a new mom saw the eyes of her child, she’d know automatically what he needed?  Kathryn waited for that magic switch in her brain and body to go on, but it never did.  So she began to think that there was something wrong with her.

 

She became hyper-vigilant.

 

*    *    *

 

When her milk had finally come in, it had felt anti-climactic, to say the very least.  For any other new mother, it was a foregone conclusion – and nothing much to celebrate.  Something this natural was inevitable, but in the Delta Quadrant, nothing was ever free of worry, nothing was ever “the usual.”  Kathryn was glad to know that her suspicions were false, that she didn’t suffer from some unforeseen malady as a result of an alien virus or bacterium.  The Doctor had reassured her as much, but the captain in her had learned early in their journey that nothing would go according to plan.

 

Demothi was feeding on demand, sometimes several times an hour, and it was exhausting.  Kathryn was too embarrassed to be up front about her situation and left it to Chakotay to assume her responsibilities on the Bridge – as reluctant as she was to give up command.

 

She should’ve been lulled into a hypnotic state by the thrum of the engines, eased into a much-needed lethargy now that her son was tightly swaddled, placed in his crib, his tummy full and his mouth half-open, snoring in that miraculous, sniffle-like way.

 

Demothi was a week old and Kathryn could count on one hand how many hours of sleep she’d had.

 

How could she deign to be so tired?  After all she’d put the ship and crew through?  They’d lost the trade agreement with the Thaytans because the dilithium walls had cracked from Demothi’s wails.  Even though it was no one’s fault (apparently Thaytan infants were as quiet as their laboring mothers), the terms of acquisition had been breached.

 

All of her suffering – and by extension, Voyager’s as well – for nothing.  And so it made Kathryn feel like…nothing.

 

She had to do something.  It was a rare moment when Demothi wasn’t on high alert.  Whether she was conscious of it or not, Kathryn was trying harder in her attempts to feed him, burp him and get him drowsy for enough of a respite.  And now that she’d had it, instead of laying back to take a much-needed nap in quiet celebration, her palms itched to tinker with the comm system. 

 

They were in Regol space and in desperate need of fuel.  To her anguish and embarrassment, Voyager would have to go to grey mode if they couldn’t cajole this particular alien species into trading with them. For the first time, she didn’t know what was going on beyond her quarters and it was driving her mad.  Kathryn promised herself that she could sleep only when she knew for a fact that the negotiations were in the bag.

 

It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Chakotay to take over.  She just didn’t see the harm in eavesdropping.

 

*    *    *

 

The Menaeti told them that the Regolians didn’t like “women warriors” so Chakotay took no chances; the mess hall was conspicuously free of female members of the crew and had been redecorated to suit Ambassador Creon’s tastes – a cross between Klingon austerity and Cardassian excess – that had depleted Neelix’s resources for the last hour.  The commander took his time making small talk, keeping to the protocol he and Tuvok had gone over in the ready room and pushing aside just how desperate the situation had become.

 

“You have quite a ship, Captain Chakotay,” Creon’s clicking drawl only exacerbated his menacing appearance and the commander tried valiantly to hide a growing sense of dread.

 

“It’s not for sale, Ambassador,” Chakotay knew that he had to walk that tightrope between assertiveness and servility in order to get the Regolians to come around, “Although we’d be happy to share some of our technology –”

 

“We’re much too advanced -”

 

“ – or our culture.”

 

“ - so you’ll forgive me if I comment on the primitive nature of your Alpha Quadrant species.”  He hissed with an oily smile before sighing grotesquely, “Still, we are an open-minded populace and willing to show charity to anyone in need.”

 

Voyager’s Talaxian chef chose that moment to amble by with an almost empty tray of leola root bites.

 

“Neelix!” Chakotay blocked his path, relieved to see a familiar face in a sea of lizard-like skin, “This is our recreational director, among other things.  Why don’t you brief Ambassador Creon on the _humble_ games the Regolian convoy can expect to partake of while onboard Voyager.”  He then offered an ingratiating smile to his guest, “I’m sure you and your esteemed cohorts will master them in no time.”

 

“Perhaps I will get a chance to spar with you, Captain.”

 

“I would be honored, Ambassador.  Mr. Neelix, you have the floor.”

 

“At your service, Com-Captain!”

 

Chakotay focused on the grinding of his own teethas he set his jaw and forced a smile.  The poor Talaxian looked like he was about to jump out of his spotted skin, but with a pat, the commander reassured him that he’d picked the right person for the job.  Chakotay then caught the almost semi-permanent frown from Tuvok across the room, excused himself and made his way over there.

 

Within a moment, they were side by side.  The chief of security was holding up a plate, picking occasionally at what lay there.  To the unassuming eye, he looked bored, but in reality, he was doing his job – sizing up a possible enemy.

 

“Are you sure this is going to work, Tuvok?” Chakotay whispered, selecting a few choice items from the table behind them, an edge to his voice.

 

“It seems that we have little choice; however, from what I can discern, it is ‘working.’” The Vulcan’s frown deepened as his ears honed in on the mess hall cook’s distinctive voice amidst the cacophony, “Until this moment, I was not aware of the intriguing permutations of kadis kot.  The Ambassador appears pacified –”

 

“I wish he’d move on to Parisses Squares.  Is Harry ready?”

 

Tuvok nodded.

 

“Good,” Chakotay turned around and took a deep draught from his mug and swallowed grimly, “We never talked about a Plan B.”

 

The Vulcan then quirked up an eyebrow, “You are the tactician.  I would assume your options would narrow down to one – as my options had as well.”

 

“Then Ayala is at the conn.”

 

“With Paris at the ready.”

 

“B’Elanna?”

 

“Lieutenant Torres has located the deposits on Regol Prime and locked onto them. Lieutenant Carey is in the main transporter room, monitoring all of our guests’ biosigns by remote.”

 

Chakotay smiled genuinely for the first time that day, “You have a code word you’d like to share with me, Tuvok?”

 

He almost smiled back.  For a Vulcan.  “Demothi.”

 

The commander’s smile flattened itself out into a thin line once more as he remembered Kathryn, “Perfect.”

 

*    *    *

 

A visibly agitated captain paced back and forth in front of her desk, the monitor’s speakers giving her full access to what was being said between Neelix and Ambassador Creon.  She pulled the robe tighter around her body and ignored the heaviness of her breasts, the bags under her eyes and how they seemed to pull her face down with the weight of so little sleep.

 

Her shaky fingers drummed themselves on the tabletop, her feet nagging her to cover the path to the replicator for a cup of coffee.  All she could drink was decaf – which was about as effective as reconstituted air for her state of mind.  She needed all the help she could get in reading the tone of the Regolian leader’s voice.

 

Why had Chakotay just left the Ambassador there with Neelix?  She loved the jovial Talaxian like a cousin, but was fully aware of how easily he could get off track.  So far, there had been no mention of the dilithium ore the aliens had an abundance of on Regol Prime.  How could her husband take this so lightly?  He should be right in the thick of the negotiation instead of rolling over dead.

 

She walked to the threshold of Demothi’s room to check on him; he was still fast asleep. 

 

If Kathryn stopped to check her reflection in a passing mirror before she marched into the master bedroom and pulled one of her uniforms off its hangar with an angry yank, she would’ve realized that the last place everyone needed her to be was in the mess hall.

 

*    *    *

 

“Oh no.”

 

Before any of the guests noticed that she’d entered the room, Chakotay strode past Tuvok and intercepted Kathryn, muttering a curse under his breath. Anticipating a collective hush, his peripheral vision flicked from bottom corner to bottom corner. “You can’t be here,” he hissed, “The Regolians –”

 

“I’ve been fully briefed on their culture by the updated database, no thanks to you, and I’m past caring,” she interrupted with a huff.  She then tried to get around him, but Chakotay pivoted to block her, standing his ground.

 

“Kathryn, I have it under control,” his warning tone was soft, but unmistakably tense.

 

She looked him dead in the eye, set her jaw and stalked over to the alien diplomat.

 

“Ambassador Creon,” she faked a smile as the reptilian dignitary turned to face her. 

 

His initial look of surprise morphed quickly into one of disgust, “And you are -?”

 

“Captain Kathryn Janeway,” she applied, every word dripping with sweetness, “Let me give you a belated welcome.  I was indisposed at the time, but now –”

 

“ _Captain?!_  A _woman_ captain??”  Creon spat it out as though it had been a spoiled piece of gristle.

 

She ignored the inference of prejudice and plowed on, “Now that you’ve enjoyed some of our Alpha Quadrant hospitality,” glaring at Neelix to send him on his way, “I’d like to show you just how _advanced_ our technology is.  What my subordinates have failed to tell you –”

 

“Kathryn,” Suddenly Chakotay was at her side, but it was no use.

 

“You will address me by rank, Commander,” she glared at him.

 

“ _Commander?!_   You are _her_ subordinate??”  This time, spittle flew from Creon’s lizard lips.

 

All of the endless nights of feeding and burping were taking its toll on Kathryn’s patience.  She knew that she had only one chance to appeal to the leader and took a deep breath before barreling through.

 

“Ambassador, according to our initial geological survey, Regol Prime is deteriorating at a rate that in ten years, the planet will tear itself apart.”

 

She then handed him a PADD that was open to specific data translated into his language.  Kathryn took advantage of his momentary speechlessness.

 

“In the Alpha Quadrant, a number of planets in a region called Selcundi Drema were destroyed due to tectonic stresses caused by the generator strata of perfectly aligned dilithium lattices – the same lattices we’ve detected beneath your planet’s surface.  If you allow us to mine your ore as well as coordinate an energy relocation project in a remote area of space, we may be able to save Regol Prime.”

 

It was a cut-to-the-chase move that Kathryn was famous for and had worked 99% of the time.  A corner of her mouth quirked up and her hands went to her roomy hips.  In that moment, she noticed a stray hair had come loose from her updo and she huffed out a breath to blow it off of her face.

 

The diplomat didn’t give her the expected look of gratitude; instead the scales along his face darkened and hardened.  A deep snarl, rimmed by a slew of sharp fangs, completed the hostile look.

 

On instinct, both Chakotay and Tuvok protectively moved in her direction, but were stopped by two of Creon’s minions – each a full half-meter taller than either crewman.

 

“ _You_ save _us_?” The Ambassador erupted in deep-throated laughter, the surrounding members of his convoy growling under their collective breath.

 

“How dare you stink the air with your arrogant presence.”  He began to circle her as though he were predator stalking prey, “A female dares talk to a high-ranking commodore as though her words have significance?”  He then let the PADD drop to the floor before crushing it with the heel of his reptilian foot.  He moved in and his tongue flicked at her ear, “For such an insult, Regolian law would require us to rip your ship from stem to stern.”

 

His black irises flitted from bulkhead to bulkhead, “But I would rather enjoy watching you suffer as I execute each male and sell your female contingent into slavery.”  His arm swept the room and he bellowed a war cry, “ _Arangool!_ ”

 

Chakotay’s eyes met Tuvok’s nod across the room and he tapped his communicator, “Computer, open a shipwide channel.  _Demothi_!”

 

Within a millisecond, every Regolian warrior in the mess hall disappeared in a shower of light.  
  
*Commander, all twenty-seven have been beamed back to the planet*

 

“Thanks, Joe,” Chakotay’s eyes bored holes into Kathryn’s confused blue orbs, “Harry?”

 

*We’ve got two megatons of raw ore in cargo bay two -*

 

“ _B’Elanna_ –” there was an edge of impatience to Chakotay’s voice.

 

*The reaction chamber is filled, calibrated and ready to go, Commander*

 

“Chakotay to Paris.  Maximum warp.  Take us out of here.”

 

*    *    *

 

No sooner had Tuvok exited the mess hall and presumably made it to the turbo lift did the bickering begin.

 

“Kathryn, where is Demothi?” Chakotay’s hands were on his hips and he eyed his wife with more than a little hostility.

 

“He’s fine.  He’s sleeping – “

 

“Is there anyone with him?”

 

“I programmed the computer to monitor his vital signs.  If anything dips below the accepted levels, my combadge would notify me –”

 

Chakotay and shook his head to stop her litany, “What possessed you to come down here and put a hypospanner into the works?”

 

She opened her mouth and was about to lay into him when the ship rocked violently. 

 

*Battlestations! All senior officers to the bridge!*  Tuvok’s voice rang out.

 

With no time to spare, Kathryn and Chakotay barreled out of the mess hall and raced down the corridor in tandem, but when they stopped in front of the turbo lift, nothing happened.  He keyed in his code on the adjoining console, but still, no dice.

 

Kathryn slapped her combadge just as Voyager took another hit, the force of it careening her and Chakotay’s body into the left wall, “Damage report!”

 

*Decks twelve through fourteen have been hit* Harry’s voice came on the line,  *Cascade failure in life support conduits 4.56 through 17.84. –*

 

“Send a repair crew to deck twelve –” Kathryn yelled as she walked down past the lift, motioning Chakotay to follow her to the side panel where he removed the hatch leading to a vertical Jeffries tube.

 

Harry’s voice suddenly became urgent *Captain, Commander,* and the command team had to filter out the muffled sound of Tuvok giving play-by-play instructions to the bridge crew in order to hear him, *decks three, four and six are losing life support*

 

Both Kathryn and Chakotay stopped in that moment, their eyes wide.

 

Their combined quarters.

 

Kathryn slapped her combadge once more, “Computer, initiate a transport of human child Demothi to sick bay –”

 

*Unable to comply.  All transporters are off-line*

 

For only a microsecond, she caught a flicker of admonishment in Chakotay’s eyes.  It was a combination of fear and anger that registered unmistakably as blame.

 

Suddenly, the ship rocked again.

 

*Hull breach on three!*  Harry called out.

 

_Demothi._

This time, Chakotay slapped his badge, “Computer, evacuate decks three, four and six.  Harry, get that crew on twelve to those conduits ASAP. Send a crew to deck three to repair the breach –”

 

He ran over to a panel and peeled away a hatch to reveal an emergency kit of oxygen.  There were only two tanks left.

 

“You get Demothi,” he grabbed them and gave both to her.

 

She took a medkit and began to climb, looking back over her shoulder, “Where are you going?”

 

He nodded his chin upward, “With you –”

 

“Someone needs to be on the bridge –”

 

“Tuvok has it under control, Kathryn. I need to locate that breach and stabilize it until the repair crew arrives.”

 

There was no time for arguing anymore; Kathryn focused until she could reach the emergency drill aspect of her brain.  The adrenaline coursing through her body sharpened her vision, her legs taking two or three rungs at a time while Voyager continued to list and shake with the oncoming attack.

 

She raced down the corridor and didn’t have to look back to know that Chakotay had already disappeared in the opposite direction.  The red alert klaxons were going off, the blinking lights along the corridor marking an urgency that matched her growing panic.

 

When she reached her doorway, Kathryn keyed in her override, but nothing happened.  The barrier was shut tightly, no crack in the partition from which to pull the sliding panels apart.  Her palms flat to the door, her arm muscles groaned and ached as she eased the partition enough to one side to fit her fingers through and pry them open.

 

It was then that she could hear him wail.  It was ear shattering and her heart dropped to the floor.

 

Speechless with fear, Kathryn grabbed the tanks and medkit and raced into Demothi’s room.  The blanket was crumpled up to one side, her infant son having wrestled out of his bindings, his arms and legs trembling, his mouth wide open and his face red from crying.

 

A wave of guilt almost paralyzed her as she dropped everything, scooped him up in her arms and scanned the room for the carrier pack she needed to put him in.

 

“Shh, shh!  Oh, honey, I’m sorry.  Mommy’s sorry –” Fresh tears sprang to her eyes as she finally located the pack, “I have to put you down again…I know, I’m sorry –”

 

It was a mantra to keep her from panicking as she placed him back into the safety of his crib and quickly donned the pack, slipping her arms through the loops, snapping the closure on the belt and tightening the straps.  She then placed him as gently as she could into the apparatus, her belly flush against his.

 

*Kathryn, do you have him?!*  Chakotay’s voice came on the line.

 

“He’s here.  He’s fine; just, j-just very scared.  I have to get him to sick bay –”

 

Suddenly, her husband appeared in the doorway, out of breath.  Upon seeing them together, Chakotay flashed a grim smile of relief.  “The repair crew has arrived.  Let’s go.”

 

Tears streamed down her face as Kathryn nodded over and over.  Chakotay broke the spell by taking her hand and grasping it tightly, pulling his wife along as they ran out of their combined quarters and back into the corridor.

 

*    *    *

 

She replayed those key moments in her head over and over again as she watched Demothi sleeping peacefully in his crib, her entire being overwhelmed with guilt and regret.

 

Voyager had successfully made it back to Menaeti space, where the crew received political asylum until they could make their repairs and take the long way around.  Kathryn hadn’t known what Tuvok and Chakotay had discovered about the warrior species; there had been little time to brief her.  And that had been her crewmen’s only mistake.  The Regolians engaged in a doublespeak when it came to bargaining.  For centuries, their people had lived in poverty, giving them little pride from which to barter.  The bravado she’d overheard in the mess hall was the ritual posturing that came before doling out ‘charity.’  Chakotay was right to appease the diplomat because in the end, the Regolians had nothing to lose from a trade of dilithium for some of Voyager’s technological advances.  But first, a commanding officer had to show the reptilian race a begrudging, but necessary, respect.

 

It was the worst mark on the captain’s record to date.  Voyager was now a fugitive of Regolian law, having stolen a large deposit of ore.  What had started out as a trade negotiation ended up being a criminal flight for survival.  At least destroying the Caretaker had been a selfless act; Voyager’s reputation in the Delta Quadrant was now forever besmirched by irrevocable accusations of grand larceny.  Kathryn and her crew were no better than pirates on the high seas. 

 

She tried to make sense of what had happened and had run the gamut of emotions in the process.  There hadn’t been time to question her staff or delegate in the heat of battle, but now that it was over – the ship orbiting one of the Menaeti’s moons, a celestial body that naturally cloaked the vessel from any battle cruiser’s sensors – she waited for the lines of communication between her and her crew to open.

 

Or at least, between her and Chakotay.

 

As though on cue with her thoughts, the door to their combined quarters hissed open. She stood up from the glider opposite Demothi’s bed.  Kathryn expected to see Chakotay enter the room in the next second and was surprised to hear the swish of his uniform trousers as he walked to their bathroom instead.  He ran the tap and when the sounds of splashing ceased, she waited for him to appear.

 

“Computer, double scotch, Macallan, aged thirty years, neat.”

 

He’d knocked half of it back before realizing that she’d entered the room.  Chakotay turned until his profile faced her.  He looked at her sideways for a long moment, his stoic expression revealing nothing but weariness, before raising the glass to his lips once more and emptying the rest of it into his gullet, his jaw setting tightly as the liquor burned his insides.  Within seconds, he felt the bags growing under his eyes begin to float.

 

“He’s asleep,” she stood with her posture slumped in truce.  It was the first time she’d been able to speak to him since the attack.

 

“That’s good.  At least one of us is getting rest.”  Petulance had crept into his voice and he could feel the air in the room grow cold with tension.

 

“I apologize,” Kathryn took a step closer, wrapping the robe around her tighter, “What I did was...”

 

“Reckless? Foolhardy?  Oh wait –” Chakotay ordered more from the replicator, “I think Ambassador Creon said it best when he described you as ‘arrogant.’  You know, Kathryn, I’ve never, ever, in all my time with you – even after you destroyed our one means of getting home – agreed with an enemy.  But you are exactly as he described.

 

“And you know what hurts more than anything?”

 

The double scotch appeared again, but this time, Kathryn, her eyes shiny, her lips drawn into a tight line, stood between him and the replicator and bravely took the glass from his hand, putting it off to one side.

 

“What?” her softened voice and gaze spoke volumes of ‘forgive me.’

 

He ignored it, his gaze back never wavering. Chakotay let her come between his baser self and the liquor, but that was all that he would allow her to do.

 

“It hurts me that you don’t trust this entire crew to pick up where you left off.  That you don’t trust _me_ to do the job I did, the job I used to do in the Alpha Quadrant.  The only reason why you and I are of different ranks is because I dropped Starfleet for a cause I believed in.  But in all my time with the Maquis, people came first.  Not principle.  _People_.”

 

Chakotay’s lecturing tone had left him breathless and he paused to recover.  The emotion behind the words causing his voice to shake with anger now dissipated into one of sadness, tears on the verge of spilling from his eyes.

 

“And Demothi is part of your crew.  He may not be able to change a plasma conduit, but he’s the epitome of what Starfleet principle is designed to protect.”

 

He stepped forward and tried to take her into his arms, the anger gone now that he’d been given a chance to empty his frustrations.

 

It had the opposite effect on Kathryn.  She took a step back and hugged herself, the defenses up.

 

“Y-You imply that I don’t think of him as a person?”  She found it difficult to swallow the lump growing in her throat but willed herself not to cry.

 

“Why did you leave our quarters, Kathryn?” he honestly wanted to know, “When can you stop being the captain and start being his mother?”

 

It was a blow to her psyche.  The stomach cramps she was having since Demothi had been born cycled in anew and she doubled over, reached for the sofa off to one side and sat down, not sure her legs could keep her upright.

 

His stolid form remained where it was, the energy to comfort her having been lost in the day’s negotiation with the Menaeti and a confrontation that they’d both needed but dreaded at the same time.

 

“I’ll watch over Demothi for gamma shift,” he mumbled, rubbing the temples on either side of his closed eyes before taking off in the direction of their son’s room.

 

“I pumped at least four bottles worth,” she offered up weakly.

 

He sighed and turned, a small smile of regret tweaking his lips upward, “I’m sorry for what I said, Kathryn.  I know we’re doing the best we can.  Get some sleep.”

 

As he disappeared into Demothi’s room and she could hear the glider creak from him collapsing into it, Kathryn realized that for the first time, Chakotay had forgotten to say ‘I love you.’

**Author's Note:**

> So I've been trying to write this albatross for close to three years. It's a present for my plot beta corimariee but the subject matter (which is something I have direct experience with) is darker than your average Voyager J/C babyfic - part of the reason that drove me to write it.
> 
> I really have no idea if this is something anyone would want to read. I know I'll finish it all at some point - for Cori and for myself - but she's convinced that if I don't set this thing loose, it may just stay in my hard drive for another three years. Basically, she wants you people to kick my ass. Charming. Thanks for indulging me. And her!


End file.
